


Lost Boy

by GreenEyedDevil



Series: Neverland [1]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Child Abduction, Child Abuse, Death, Friends With Benefits, Graphic, Grief, Multi, Murder, Neglect, PTSD, Self Destructive Behaviour, Substance Abuse, Torture, Tragedy, Trauma, Waterboarding, issues upon issues, loss of a parent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:43:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 36,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4970302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenEyedDevil/pseuds/GreenEyedDevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can't miss what you never had. When Tim's estranged mother dies he can barely muster a response to the news, his memories of her sparse at best. He's made his peace with it, in his own way. But when information reaches him about his mothers past and her role in a bloody murder, Tim is drawn into a confusing and traumatic mystery. For the first time, Tim may learn exactly why his mother abandoned him. But is the answer something he wants to hear?</p><p>Not officially connected to my other works but borrowing similar themes, exploring Tim's background in as many ways as I can!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“It’s you,” Tim Gutterson’s voice was always unexpectedly strong to Raylan Given’s ear. The younger Marshal was slight and slender and for Raylan to point that out it meant something. His voice suited his frame but carried like the boy sang for his living. By his own account his attempts to sing had been labelled war crimes in all countries. Raylan had to figure the vocal fortitude came from the military background. You had to develop those vocal chords to be heard over gunfire and explosions.

“It’s not me,” Raylan shook his head, murmuring most of his answer into his coffee but his eyes were locked on their boss as he paced behind his desk, a phone clamped to his ear. “If it was me he’d look mad.”

“You know as well as I do that mans emotions are nuanced and complex. He could be mad, but also sad. Because at last, your bullshit has broken his heart,” Tim teased in that drawl of his, watching Art out of the corner of his eye. Unlike Raylan, who didn’t even bother, Tim was at least pretending to be working.

Raylan leant back in his chair, his computer still in standby after coming back from lunch, screen blank. “Naw, see,” he pointed out as Art stood still and leant forwards, resting on hand on his desk, shoulders slumped over, “he’s anxious. Maybe _he’s_ the one in trouble.”

 “That’s that JFK slouch. That’s not a ‘Raylan fucked up’ posture. That’s someone about to get a heap of bad news,” Tim agreed, spoke in that calm and confident way that said he knew rather than thought. He turned his attention back to his computer screen, glowering at something that had popped up on his display.

As if he was listening to them and biding his time, Art ended his call and set down his phone. He visibly took a big deep breath, a weight settling over him, a burden he had to carry until it was his duty to share it. As they watched he crossed to his safe, retrieved the special bourbon, two tumblers. He poured two drinks out, one for him and one for the person who’s day he was about to ruin.

Raylan glanced around the office, noticed every other Marshall watching Art just as closely as he and Tim. This was an office full of people who used guns every day. Most of their friends and family were Marshals, cops, soldiers, EMTs and firemen. They led dangerous lives, often brief ones. For all Raylan and Tim teasing each other, there was a real chance somebodies world was about to end.

Art came to the door of his office and stepped out into the bull pit and with no communication the gentle hum of work and activity resumed, like it had never stopped, every Marshal going back to pretending they hadn’t been watching Art closely.

He glanced around and everyone waited for his eyes to land. He lingered on Raylan and Raylan thought of the text he’d received from Winona not two minutes before, of baby Willa’s feet coated in baby safe paint, part of a decorating project or some such thing. Art had been on the phone that entire time. It wasn’t Winona or Willa. He had no one else to miss or mourn so the look of doom on Art’s face wasn’t for him.

Art glanced to Tim and let out a faint sigh. “Tim…you busy?”

The rest of the office showed admiral restraint in not turning to openly stare. Tim showed even more impressive self control, maintaining a calm expression of casual disinterest even while he saved his work, rose from his desk. “Sure, Chief.”

He followed Art into the office. Raylan half expected he would look back, but he didn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

The taste of bourbon sat sour on Tim’s tongue and the amber fire its self was claggy and heavy in his stomach. He was thinking of that song she liked, ‘My Girl’, thinking of her singing it or humming it to herself when his grandparents would take him to visit with her, leave her babysitting in the hopes her maternal instincts would kick back in. Their hopes were always dashed.

When he’d gotten older he’d read about animals rejecting their young, zoo keepers attempting reconciliations, realised his grandparents were playing zoo keeper. It had been years before he’d understood they were trying to get him away from his father. There had been legal reasons he couldn’t live with them and they’d hoped his mother might suddenly figure everything out, protect him from getting hit every day. But that had taken years for him to understand. At thirteen, he’d been so angry with them. Not that it mattered. By then, they were dead.

“Seems she fell. Hit her head. She was on some meds already that were thinning her blood and she was drinking on top of it,” Art was telling him and though Tim was only half listening he was recording every word. “So it was…it looked like murder. They thought that, initially. She had lost her ID and her purse, so it took a few days to identify her…” Art trailed off and Tim registered the silence, raised his eyes from the surface of Art’s desk to his face.

He knew he was supposed to say something, probably. Or maybe he was meant to cry. He tried to figure what Rachel might do but came up empty. He wasn’t numb, which he knew someone would eventually suggest. Numb or in shock or struck dumb by the emotions.

None of that was true. He just didn’t feel anything. Unless perhaps the well of ‘Nothing’ that had opened up in his chest could be called a feeling. It was something, he supposed. There was some anxiety perhaps, a faint anger. Was that grief? None of it was for her. It just was, it was there and hadn’t been before. Maybe it’s as close as he would get.

“Tim,” Art said, “you okay? Take another,” he poured a second drink and Tim’s entire body hummed with the urge to take it but he shook his head.

“I got work, Chief,” he said calmly.

He saw the surprise, the pity, hated it, hated her. Like the anger it was a faint thing, a dull and unused muscle flickering to life for the first time in years. He was past such juvenile things as hate, or thought he had been.

 “No, son,” Art said in his best paternal tone of voice and Tim hated it even more, “you can take the day.”

Tim braced himself, got a kind of mental lasso on some of his feelings, Art’s voice acting like an anchor point for his focus. Now things were going to get awkward. “I don’t need the day. I don’t even need the hour. I’d kind of like to get back to work,” he tried to moderate his tone, soften it to sound a little less blasé when mostly he was irritated. He didn’t want to talk about this, about her, not now and not with Art, ever.

Art blinked, questions racing behind his eyes, his lips moving slightly as he tried to settle on a single one. “Tim, can you repeat back to me what I just said?” he asked and there was something in his tone, concern and something else a little disturbed.

Art knew he had PTSD. From the moment he’d told his boss, Tim had regretted it. Though Art had never made a thing of it, had at worst asked after Tim’s mood or his day a teeny bit more than normal. But Tim had always wondered if a day might come when Art would ask after it. It hadn’t yet. It probably wasn’t happening right now but Tim couldn’t help the defensive mood it triggered.

Tim felt his expression harden, was glad of it. “Verbatim?”

Art cocked his head, raised and dropped his shoulders in a small shrug, “Summarise it if you want,” he said gently.

Tim took a slow breath in, exhaled just as slowly. Art was a lot of things but he didn’t rattle easy and he responded to Tim’s emotional retreat, to the almost palpable drop in the room temperature with a calm, placid stare.

“My mom died,” Tim summarised, his tone as flat and dry as it ever got.. He knew, he understood, he had gotten the message clearly enough.

Art waited but he had sensed Tim had reached the limits of what patience he had for the conversation. He took a breath, “You know, some folks, in this situation, they might…want to talk to someone? Say something,” he said, almost demanding.

“Never was my style,” Tim drawled in a deadpan and even Art had to agree with that.

“You want to talk about anything?” Art asked again, “call it my sixth sense but I get this feeling there’s some history.” He laced some of the sincerity with a more familiar sarcasm, perhaps hoping to appeal to Tim on his level.

“There's actually not," Tim said honestly, ignoring the attempt to reach out, able to admit quite freely to himself that he was not able to discuss this with Art. Not his mother. He liked his boss, knew Art had some inkling his childhood had been a fraught and unhappy one. He didn’t want Art to know more than that. He didn’t like knowing it himself. He didn’t like knowing his co worker Raylan had an equally miserable time growing up. Such subjects set his teeth on edge, made him want to do something harmful to someone, or himself. “Thank you for letting me know. I appreciate it. You mind I go back to my job? I was elbow deep in the Harold file.”

Art blinked, stared at the surface of his desk. “Since I gave you that drink you should probably surf your desk for the rest of the day,” Art was sympathetic but his tone was laced with pity and Tim felt his stomach twist painfully again. He fleetingly entertained telling Art everything, but his body was responding to the dismissal before his mind caught up. Tim nodded, rose from the seat and without another word he walked out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Three Days Later**

 

“How you think he’s doing?” Art Mullen spoke so suddenly that Raylan actually flinched and in his hand freshly poured coffee sloshed up over the sides of his mug, burning his fingers.

He set the mug down quickly, reached for paper towels and the small sink, the cold tap, running the water over his hand.

“Jesus shit, Art. Good morning, hi, how was your evening?” Raylan snapped, already irritable from a lack of sufficient caffeine and now nursing a burn on his shooting hand, his trigger finger no less.

“Like…he seem quiet to you?” Art, oblivious to or not caring that he might have maimed Raylan was trailing after him towards the sink, his eyes fixed on Tim who was across the office, inside the conference room and briefing some other Marshals on a case. Tim was standing at the head of the table and had images and maps tapes to an opposite wall while he and Rachel discussed something. Though he seemed oblivious to Art’s attention, Tim almost certainly knew they were watching.

“You’re asking me if Tim is quiet?” Raylan frowned at Art. “Tim?”

“So you think he is?” Art asked.

“Tim” Raylan said again, stressed the three short letters.

“It was sad, Raylan,”Art said plaintively. “It was like I told him his parking spot got moved. He was at worst inconvenienced,” he was staring. “You ever worry what if…” he caught himself, shook his head and rubbed a hand over his hairless dome.

“What if?” Raylan frowned at Art over his shoulder.

Art looked grim, lips pressed together in a thin line as he stared at his youngest Marshal. “War…isn’t good for people,” he said, frowning at himself or at his wording.

Raylan frowned, not sure he liked where Art seemed to have gone. “He’s a good kid,” Raylan said gently, feeling like he was reminding of Art of something the man already knew. “We’re talkin’ about his mother, Art.”

“Yeah,” Art said with a little less conviction than Raylan would have liked.

“Art,” Raylan said and the older man glanced at him. “He’s a good kid.”

Art look at him, the frown softening. “Yeah.” This time he meant it.

Raylan turned back to his fingers, the cool water soothing at least a little of the tenderness. Art was silent behind him but the intensity of his mood was radiating against Raylan’s back like a wall of heat. “You didn’t care this much when Arlo died,” Raylan teased his boss, wincing at as he examined his fingertips, fancied he could see the skin already turning red. He glanced back at Art, “And I reacted about the same.”

“No,” Art shook his head. “You reacted. My problem is he didn’t, at all.”

Raylan sighed, turned to follow Art’s gaze. Tim was standing still as Raylan glanced over, listening quietly to something being said by one of the other Marshals.  He raised a hand, itched his eyelid, nodded, shifted his weight from one foot to another, looked like normal, typical Tim. But Art was worried, and would remain so. He cared deeply for his Marshals, Raylan knew that for a god damned fact.

“I know,” Raylan said. He hadn’t wanted to spare too much thought on it, but when Art quietly let him know Tim’s mother had died, and Tim’s response could be described as underwhelming at best, Raylan had worried too. “You want me to pour some liquor in him, see if I can get him talking?”

Art took a deep, relieved breath. “Would you?”

“For you, Art,” Raylan said. “Anything.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Now, Edgar,” Raylan said firmly and Tim spared him a glance, saw the stern expression he was giving the pacing Edgar Bells.

“Bring that fuckin’ bitch down here,” Edgar demanded, shifting his grip on the toddler in his arms, the knife he held in one hand resting against her leg. She wasn’t hurt, yet.

She whimpered, tired and confused and likely traumatised for life. “She thinks she’ll fuckin’ divorce me?”

Around them the trees stirred as a wind rustled through them, carrying a cold chill and the smell of frost and cold.

Tim had always thought Edgar looked like Bruce Campbell if Campbell was thirty some pounds underweight, had a skin condition that looked like leprosy’s angrier cousin, and had an ongoing meth problem. He was tall and broad with a jawline that looked chiselled from stone but the drugs were already dissolving the bones of his teeth. The all American jaw line already looked saggy and sunken. Once, amazingly, he had been a ladies man.

The thought was distracting Tim from the raging anger in his chest, helping him to keep some modicum of calm. The three year old girl, Edgar’s daughter Macy, was watching her fathers face, looking to Raylan and to Tim back to her father. Her face was smudged and dirty, hair tangled, clothes ruffled from being carried everywhere. Edgar had nearly killed her mother, taken Macy for four hours before someone spotted him in rest stop just outside Lexington, carrying a terrified three year old.

When Raylan and Tim had rolled up, slow and calm, Edgar had seemed prepared for their arrival, resigned to it, even waving at them as they exited Raylan’s town car taking Macy's hand and encouraging her to wave hello as well..

But without warning he had snatched Macy up from where she had been standing at his feet and it was like an eight inch kitchen knife had materialised in his hand. He had done it on purpose. He was using her as a human shield, knew they were a lot less likely to shoot him with a kid in his arms. And he wasn’t wrong about it either.

Between Raylan and Tim they might have been the best shots in the state, but Macy was a tall three year old and despite her visible trauma she clung to her dad, covering most of his torso with her little body.

Tim had no shot, wasn’t even entirely comfortable having a gun on him right just this minute with the tiny little girl so close nearby. He had warned Raylan with a growl that if Tim had no shot, Raylan didn't. 

 Tim hated Edgar for doing this to his kid, hated him for what he had done to his wife a few hours earlier. She had finally been able to file divorce papers after years of physical abuse, finally felt strong enough to take that step in separating from him entirely. She had sued for sole custody of Macy along with it, and for good reason. Edgar's response was to track down where she lived and try to beat her to death. He’d gotten most of the way there but history had shown that Leanne would be damned before she’d let Edgar be her end. She was in the hospital right now, under heavy sedation since she had tried to get out of bed and find her kid, ignoring her shattered eye socket, broken jaw and ribs and a punctured lung.

 “I can’t bring her here just yet,” Raylan was trying to maintain some calm, trying to talk Edgar down but it was a futile effort.

 Edgar was one of those rare bad guys Tim found it impossible to find any spot of sympathy for. Tim knew all the statistics and the reasons why and how criminals became criminals, how often it was that a repeat offender had survived a horrible childhood. He reminded himself regularly how easily he could have gone down that path, how easily Raylan could have.

He had even found himself, at times, pitying the infamous and dangerous Boyd Crowder. Crowder’s father had been borderline demonic and Tim couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine what kind of a time the Crowder children had growing up.

But Edgar…Edgar Bells was just an asshole.

“Fuckin’ get her!” Edgar yelled and the sharp sound made Macy flinch a little, a flutter of the eyelids, and she began to softly cry. Not shriek or wail in earnest, just quiet crying. She was used to Edgar’s temper, used to being sad and quiet. 

Tim licked his lips, something he did when he was angry and when he was anxious. Right now he was both. He watched Edgar move, the way he rocked on his feet, shifted Macy’s weight on his hip. He was skinny but the man was strong, all lean muscle with no trace of fat on him. He was good on his feet and his criminal history was rife with accounts of his handiness in a fight. He was not to be underestimated. Tim’s hand was cramping with an urge to draw his gun that he was fighting. He watched Edgar’s hand flex around the knife handle, the blade turning this way and that, pressing against Macy’s flowery leggings.

The road around them was silent, the only sound their voices and the susurrating wind. Tim found a centre of calm in that faint hissing sound, thought of it like the long grass he would watch when he was sniping and the raging fire in his chest cooled. He kept watching Edgar, learning.

“We can’t bring her down because she’s in hospital,” Raylan was telling Edgar. “She’s in hospital because you beat her with a crowbar, Edgar. You need to set Macy down and you need to come with us. You’re not helping yourself.”

“You’re not takin’ her from me,” Edgar gripped Macy closer. “Bring her mom down here. Bring her right god damn now or I’ll…”he cut himself off, shook his head as Macy faintly heard the word ‘mom’ and repeated it faintly. “Bring her down here.”

“She’s on a ventilator,” Raylan said firmly, losing patience and trying hard to hide it. Tim was impressed and had no trouble admitting it. He knew Raylan had a temper but for Macy’s safety he was keeping a powerful handle on it. “Edgar. Macy is hungry and she’s tired.”

It was a mistake.

“Don’t you tell me how to raise my kid!” Edgar bellowed. “You fuckin’ assholes made this all happen, you all fuckin’ did it. You all did this!”

He moved and Tim saw it coming though Raylan didn’t. Edgar hurled Macy towards Raylan and lunged forwards, arm raised, the knife coming up in a glint of silver in the low winter sun. Instinct made Raylan grab for Macy before she crashed to the ground. He caught her under the arms but stumbled to one knee with her clutched in both hands, left utterly prone and defenceless, Edgar bearing down on him, his arm swooping down with horrifying speed.

Tim closed the space between he and Edgar and tackled him, trying to grab the Edgar’s wrist, dig fingers into the nerve that would make him drop the knife. Edgar showed a surprising turn of speed, twisting even as they fell and snatching his arm out of reach. They crashed into the ground and Tim swung, hitting Edgar hard across the chin but Edgar hit him right back, Tim barely registering it, his adrenaline so high.

 Edgar hit him again but Tim was fighting for the knife, ignored the blow and kept grappling. Tim shifted and moved this way and that way and Edgar was under him, slashing up with the knife as Tim darted back out of danger. Tim grabbed at Edgar’s arm and twisted in a way that could break the bone if he pressed it and Edgar’s whole body froze at the realisation.

 Edgar’s hand sprung open involuntarily and the knife fell to the ground with a clatter. Edgar bucked, trying to throw Tim off but Tim had grabbed his cuffs, slapped on one Edgar’s wrist, grabbed the other applied pressure to him. When he moved Edgar’s arm, Edgar let him to relieve the pressure, the feeling his arm would break. He rolled where Tim moved him, shifted onto his belly and Tim snapped the cuffs in place, adjusted them so they fit the right way.

He got Edgar sat back up on his ass, legs sprawled out in front of him, then leaned over, grabbed the knife and picked it up, taking it with him while he backed up. All the fight had left Edgar, all the anger and the rage rushing out of him as the power and balance shifted, as his control was taken.

Macy?” He called in a muffled, whining sob. “Baby?”

Tim set the knife down a decent distance from Edgar, moved back over to him tightened the cuffs around both wrists, resisting the urge to continue hurting Edgar, pulled him to a seated position. Tim rolled off his knees, crouching on the balls of his feet and feeling the adrenaline finally start to fade. There was aching around his jaw and cheekbone from where Edgar hit him, Tim probing the area with a hand as he stood up.

He glanced around and saw Raylan was cradling Macy who had begun to cry in earnest, wailing for her mother and starting to struggle away from him. Tim wasn’t sure why but her building fit of hysterics felt oddly reassuring when compared to the dull, shocked out child Edgar had been holding. He had no idea if there was any weight to that, whether screaming was better than silence.

Raylan looked up at him, “Jesus, Tim. He cut you?”

Tim frowned, looked down at his body. There was a slit in his shirt in the area over his ribs, cutting clean through the under shirt too. Even as Tim saw the cut in his clothes he felt the pain, the hot burn of a cut and the ache that suggested some depth. Tim pressed his hand to the cuts in the material and drew it back, his fingers stained red. He felt a nausea twist his gut, his head float just a little.

He looked up at the concerned Raylan. “Guess he did.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You got stabbed. And you didn’t notice you got stabbed?” Art Mullen stared at Tim over the top of his desk, visibly steaming at the faint smirk Tim wore, fingers laced under his chin.

“I didn’t get stabbed,” Tim said.

He had been to the hospital, the wound taking two small stitches at one end where Edgar had gotten the blade to dig in a little. It appeared the tip of the knife had jabbed then scrapped across Tim’s rib cage, leaving the small puncture and a long but mostly shallow cut that faded to a graze. It was nothing, a non injury when compared to other wounds Tim had walked off.

“You got stabbed and didn’t notice it happened,” Art repeated.

Tim had been in a pretty decent mood up until now. The cut hurt, aching as each breath flexed but nothing some booze, a hot shower and time wouldn’t loosen up.

But he had been able to tell Leanne that Macy was safe, and Macy had been placed in emergency, temporary foster care with a family Tim had been assured had taken extensive training in dealing with traumatised children. Edgar was in cells and according to ADA Vasquez, he would go to prison for ever.

Raylan had driven them back to the office once Tim was discharged and on the way over basically insisted Tim join him for drinks once they were squared away. Tim suspected why Raylan extended the invite and didn’t think it had that much to do with the grimness of their working day. He’d accepted anyway.

“I got nicked, at best. I didn’t notice it because I was still trying to take the knife away, Chief,” Tim explained calmly. He paused for a beat, licked his lips. “It happens all the time. We get hurt on the job, don’t realise until later,” he reminded Art.  “You know, I thought you’d be happier we saved that little girl and didn’t fire one shot.” He looked up at his boss, making his feelings clear on his face. He didn’t appreciate what felt like a scolding for getting injured, despite the fact they had saved the day. “Isn’t that what you always ask us to do? Shoot less bullets? This has to be good for your blood pressure.”

Art took a deep, long breath and Tim wondered if he was in for an actual reaming. Since the news of his mother, Art’s obvious concern about Tim had made Tim feel awkward around the man. He felt like they’d had a nasty argument, left it unresolved and had been trying to act like it hadn’t happened. He didn’t want it to be this way but he wasn’t able to give Art what he needed, which was a strong emotional response to the news Lucinda Gutterson had passed.

 “That’s true,” the man said and some of the frustration, a fraction of it, seemed to leave him as he exhaled. “You did great work today, both of you. You hurtin’ much?”

“Head’s ringin’,” Tim said, feeling a small food of relief that Art was simply moving swiftly on. “And it hurts when I breathe, talk or just move around at all, for any reason.”

“You looks like shit,” Art reassured him.

“Awesome. Thanks,” Tim smirked again. He did look like shit, pale, one eye surrounded by a dark bruise but thankfully not too swollen, and there was an ugly bruise along his jaw. He had changed out of his shredded shirts into a spare black T Raylan kept in the trunk of his car, and though Raylan was slim he was broad so Tim was a little swamped. The colour and the bad fit made him look small and pale.

“Kid gonna be okay?” Art asked.

Tim felt his face twist into a grimace. “No. Probably,” he said bluntly. “I hope I’m wrong.” He raised a hand, dropped it again. “The family she’s placed with are going to work with her until Leanne’s well again. She can’t see her mom yet, can’t…” Tim paused for a second, thought of Leanne’s bruises, swollen face, her jaw misshapen and deviated out of place, her eyes completely swelled closed. There was still a concern she’d lose sight in one eye if the swelling continued. “They don’t want to scare her even more. They might have to do work so Macy actually recognises Leanne after the swelling goes down and they rebuild that half of her face.”

He fell silent then, feeling sick and angry and wishing he’d done a little more violence to Edgar Bells before he was hauled off. Art was silent for a moment as well, let Tim be. Tim licked his lips again, looked up at his boss.

Art was nodding thoughtfully, head bobbing slowly like he was hardly thinking about it, and it was like a sign that part of their talk was over. It was the shittiest part of their job, the knowledge that even after the bad guys got caught, the victims rescued and saved, there was still damage, people still got broken and sometimes for ever. Macy might be young enough she would be okay, with work and lots of love and care. Or she might grow up and wind up and follow her fathers criminal career, or winding up in abusive relationships herself. Kids went in different directions all the time, like Tim had been thinking. He pushed it away. If he thought too hard about it…he pushed it away.

 Art’s office was pleasantly dark, the way Tim preferred it, lamps and lower lights making it feel cosy and warm. It felt more like a Marshals office should be, like a movie set or something. His anger was quickly fading through sheer necessity. He couldn’t maintain that much anger for that long, couldn’t function at his job if he held on to all the frustration it brought him every day.

“Raylan speak to you yet?” Art asked in a considered, mild tone of voice and Tim felt his mood waiver, felt a jolt of anticipation he was about to be verbally ambushed.

“He’s been pestering me to go out for a drink all day. We’re heading off after this,” Tim said. “You been asking him to take me out?”

Art looked up at him, a faint smile of his own flickering across his lips at Tim’s insight. “I just want you two to be friends,” he said, half a joke covering for something else. The something else was a sincere look into Tim’s eyes. “You going to talk to him?”

“I’m going to let him get me drunk,” Tim said calmly.

Art looked disappointed but tried to hide it. He took another breath, stealing himself for something.

“I need…I need to talk to you about your mother,” he admitted and Tim felt one of those twists in his gut.

He waved a hand as if to silence his boss. “I arranged it all. I called the detective, I called the funeral homes where she was and back home. She’s been cremated and they’ll send her remains to be interred next to her folks,” Tim said. “It’s handled,” he moved, rising to leave, but Art was extending a hand.

“It’s not that. I’m glad to hear she’ll…you’ll have somewhere to go and see her,” Art tried, looking up to catch Tim’s cold glare. “This is something else.”

“Chief, I don’t want to know. I don’t need to, whatever it is,” Tim said. He wanted more than ever to be out having that drink with Raylan. Or alone, it didn’t matter so long as he got drunk. It had been a long week.

“Just hear me out, son,” Art said gently.

Tim looked away, glared at the wall, bit the inside of his cheek. He wanted to say no, walk out and be done with it, but he shrugged, a tiny shift in shoulders, his way of telling Art he’d stay and listen.

“I got a call from a Fed in Texas who was trying to track you down,” Art said bluntly. “Seems that due to the nature of your moms death…they thought she got murdered and had do no ID, at first. So they ran prints and DNA but in the meantime her purse showed up. But her profile was in the system already.”

Tim listened, frowning, already wishing he’d gotten up to leave. He debated asking Art for a bourbon, decided it would open up a new can of worms. He knew Art already thought he drank too much. And was right, Tim did drink too much. He knew that without any denial or doubt. He had a drinking problem. His trick was not caring about it.

“And it seems that there was a hit on your moms profile,” Art said and Tim felt his train of thought screech to a halt, his eyes flick to the man, a small frown crease his brows. A hit?

 “Federal? She a bank robber or something?” he was confused and for the first time in a long time he was curious about his mother.

Art took another one of those bracing breaths. “Tim your mom has been linked to a thirty year old murder case out of the south of Texas, near the border. Multiple victims, maybe linked to Cartels which is why it’s become Federal. Right now, the Fed is trying to find out more since the case was initially handled by some now defunct Sheriff’s office that got absorbed into another town, years ago. He’s tracking evidence and case files but…he’s hoping you can offer some insight.”

Tim felt a wry laugh escape him, saw the disappointment it brought to Art’s face. He felt a vaguely confrontational flare, tamped it down but still held Art’s gaze, “What?”

“I don’t find it as funny as you do,” Art said pointedly.

Tim shrugged, the physical embodiment of ‘whatever’, without saying the word to Art’s face and dealing with _that_ fall out. But for all his attitude and bluster he could feel a tension and anxiety brewing in his gut.

“He just wants to ask you some questions, “ Art said, letting it go again. Tim knew he was pushing his luck with the man, felt a little bad. It wasn’t Art’s fault, Tim’s situation with his mother. “He’s getting a hold of everything and once he figures out what he has he’s going to call you. I mean, Tim I know you can’t offer him much…you’d have been three?” Art asked.

“About that,” Tim said quietly, his mind racing now. “A federal murder case?” he asked out loud and Art nodded slowly, looked apologetic.

Tim blinked, confused, concerned in a way he hated. He wasn’t sure what to say, what to do. Part of him wanted to speak to the Fed today, right now. Another part hoped the guy never called him and the whole thing went away for ever. He took his own deep, bracing breath, saw an expectant look on Art’s face, hope that this might do or trigger some sort of response.

It helped in a strange way to silence the thousand thoughts and questions Tim was trying to get a handle on. In the middle of this, Art was hoping for the emotions? Tim got a handle on himself, locked down. He felt his expression change, felt a calm, placid mask slip into place, his default, comfortable place. He saw Art’s face change, some frustration trickle in. He felt a little better in a way he knew was probably incredibly immature. But it truly helped him. His mind stilled. He regained control.

“Thanks for letting me know, Chief,” he said in his typical calm drawl, rising from his seat and turning to leave.


	6. Chapter 6

Murrays Bar was an emergency services-friendly place a fifteen minute walk from the courthouse and Raylan had taken them there. Murrays had a decent atmosphere and ran varying happy hours and food deals so that its shift working customers didn’t miss out on too much. Murray, the owner and bartender had been a cop himself before a gunshot wound ended his career so he knew how to cater to the lawmen and women, the firemen, EMT’s and lawyers. He knew they wanted, needed, to relax. The music was good, the booze was cheap and the food, when they ordered, was always delicious.

Raylan had offered to buy them a dinner of hamburgers and fries but Tim had declined, politely, not hungry. It was a thing he did sometimes and he could feel it starting. Stress, a bad enough few days and his appetite shut down entirely.

 Tim almost felt bad for Raylan.  Almost. Raylan was making a valiant attempt to start a conversation, but if Tim hadn’t wanted to talk before he most certainly didn’t now. But Raylan didn’t let up. He took Tim’s silence on the chin and kept on at it. For a couple or three hours they drank and Raylan talked about what ever came into his head. He covered sports, current events, managed to show Tim an entire album of Willa pictures on his phone and talked about a recent weekend off where he’d watched a marathon of ‘Man vs Food’ for the entire two days, and Tim said nothing back. Not one word.

They were sitting at the bar, the whole place quiet this cool fall evening, four rounds in on beers, two in bourbon, starting their second round of hard drinks of the night. Raylan was baiting him, talking about films, praising terrible ones he knew Tim hated, cursing some of Tim’s favourites. “I just think,” Raylan said between swigs of beer. “’Aliens’ was overrated.”

Tim took a deep breath, figured he needed a distraction. So far he had been able to keep a lid on his racing thoughts of his mother but the booze was working now and it was think about her or engage with Raylan.

“I’ll fight you, pure and simple. ‘Aliens’ is art. High art.” Tim finally spoke, breaking a silence that had stretched on for two hours, saw a faint relieved slump in Raylan shoulders.

“That ‘Hicks’ guy. The strong silent soldier type. Seems cliché to me,” Raylan said, knowing exactly what he was doing, shooting Tim a sidelong glance.

“Oh, now, Givens,” Tim warned. “You talk shit about ‘Hicks’ and we got a problem,” but he smiled a little, took any tension out of it.

“Oh, because of how you’ve modelled your entire…deal after him?” Raylan teased, motioning to Tim.

“Yes,” Tim nodded. “Exactly.” That and the fact his crush on ‘Hicks’, on the actor Michael Beihn who portrayed him had been Tim’s first moment of understanding why he never liked any girl at school.

They shared a chuckle and Raylan ordered bourbons. He started praising ‘Prometheus’ and with Tim having let up they fell into a long debate about the prequel to Tim’s favourite two movies in the world.

Raylan, again, was praising it because he knew Tim hated it and it was a way to get Tim talking. Tim let him do it because maybe, just maybe, he could do this for long enough that he could leave without the conversation moving on, and then they could both tell Art they had drinks and talked and it wouldn’t be a lie. They just wouldn’t tell him what they talked about.

But Raylan was sharper than that. This outing was a much a case for him as it was a friendly drink between co-workers. They talked films for a while, for another two rounds at least and when Raylan sensed Tim was the right kind of drunk, he struck.

“Art’s worried about you,” he said bluntly, a little drunk. “You know that?”

“I do,” Tim said quietly, sipping his bourbon and letting it sit for a second, savouring the taste and the burn before he swallowed it. “He tells me himself. A lot.”

“You haven’t even talked to Rachel,” Raylan pointed out. “She’s worried too.”

“I know,” Tim said. He felt bad about not talking to Rachel but he knew she understood it a little better than Art or Raylan. There was some stuff he had told her about his childhood. Other stuff he wouldn’t touch and she respected that. Still, he knew she worried and he hated he had done that to her.

“You understand why?” Raylan was asking, “I mean….this was your mother.”

Tim sniffed, squinted at nothing. He had resolved not to say a word, but it was getting harder not to. If they wanted him to talk, he could talk. If he gave them something they would at least leave him alone, he hoped.

 “Last time I saw my mother I was eight years old and she took my pocket money to buy beers. She called me Cody. Twice.” He turned to Raylan to see his reaction, caught the wide eyed look of surprise.

“Was she abusive?” Raylan asked and the tone was so surprisingly gentle Tim was taken aback. They had barely ever discussed Tim’s own background. It was known, thanks to comments he had made, his childhood wasn’t happy. Just like Raylan he harboured incredible anger towards his father and had made as much clear. But they didn’t talk about it. Not with each other, just barely with anyone else, if ever.  Neither of them ever discussed what their fathers did to them using the word ‘abuse’, so to hear it so squarely called that, it was weird and oddly uncomfortable. But abusive was the right word, in a moral or even a legal sense.

“No,” he heard himself say. “That was dad,” he heard himself say that too and glanced back at Raylan, saw the man was watching him talk but didn’t visibly react to the revelation. “Mom was jus absent. I have no feelings for her because she wasn’t there. I don’t hate her…she wasn’t an Arlo, you know?” he didn’t mean it as an offensive jab and Raylan didn’t take it as one, or least not visibly. Lucy hadn’t been a monster. She had been a ghost.

Raylan was silent a moment, absorbing the information. He reached for his drink and sipped quietly. “Well that’s fair enough,” Raylan said. “I wouldn’t expect you to feel any which way,” he shrugged and Tim felt oddly grateful.

 He didn’t need Raylan’s permission to feel like he did, but knowing Raylan at least understood made him feel slightly less like a freak, or like he had profound emotional issues. He ignored the thought this was _Raylan Givens_ he was using to justify his own emotional baggage.

The older man was nodding, turned back to his drinks. “You should probably tell Art that,” he said. “He’s convinced you’re gonna snap, shoot up the office or something.”

Tim felt his mood turn. flick like a switch and set his tumbler down on the bar so fast it made a cracking sound that rang across Murrays. A few heads looked around at the sound, probably cops thinking it could be a gun shot, but Tim ignored them, ignored everyone. He slid out of his seat and for the third time in as many days he made a wordless exit from a conversation he hated having.

It was getting to be a habit.


	7. Chapter 7

Tim walked quickly, head buzzing, Raylan’s words clanging around inside his skull.

Art thought he might shoot up the office.

 Art had shared this concern with _Raylan._ With anyone at all but especially Raylan, king of the screw ups.

His chest burned with a bitter anger and disappointment, his throat feeling thick. His chest heaved as he walked, his heart racing, hands clenching and unclenching. He felt hot, despite the cool night air and his breath clouding around his head. He had an urge to go back and smack Raylan in the mouth, had an urge to call Art and ask who in the hell the man thought he was. He ignored it all, resolved to drink until he passed out and he could briefly forget his mother and Art and god damn Raylan Givens.

As he walked, Tim reached for a pack of cigarettes he kept hidden in an inner pocket of his jacket. Officially, he had quit smoking after Rachel spent a full month taping gory photos of victims of mouth and throat cancers to his computer screen. In reality they both knew he still smoked and he just learned to hide it better.

His hands tremored with adrenaline and booze fuelled anger has he lit up, but first drag calmed some of the buzzing in his brain. He had a thought, changed direction quickly and his legs carried him on a familiar path.

Raylan’s words had touched a nerve, a big one. If Art had really said that it confirmed Tim’s fears that he shouldn’t have spoken of his PTSD to the older man. Now Art was afraid of him.

Tim stopped as that thought hit him, a feeling in his gut taking his breath away. He leant against a nearby wall, hunched over slightly, staring at the ground and smoking, trying to slow down the pace and force of each drag, failing terribly. But though he smoked too quickly it was helping in a way. Though nicotine was a stimulant, like many smokers Tim’s relief was psychological and it began to work quickly. He felt a little less like he could harm another living human and each drag, each hit of the potent chemicals made him feel better.

 He pushed thoughts of Raylan from his mind, thoughts of Art harbouring such dark concerns. It wasn’t true, he decided bluntly, going for full denial, Raylan chose his words poorly, confused something else Art had said, had shared out of concern.

He couldn’t quite figure out what that would have been for Raylan to get to ‘shoot up the office’ was the problem, the major hole in his plan to repress the idea Art was that scared of him.

He pushed off the wall, lit up a second cigarette and started walking again. Now he was calmer, he smoked more slowly, ruminating on it.

Fuck Raylan. And Art. And his mom.

 Damn her for dying and making it a ‘thing’ at his work place. Damn Art’s ignorance and Raylans drunken obliviousness.

He didn’t need this. His head throbbed with the beginning of a headache, maybe the first glimmers of a migraine. He knew he had smoked his first too quickly and it was contributing to his headache but he didn’t care. He would take something for it later. For now, he knew how to feel better.

He had reached a bar and when he finished his smoke, with a familiar nod to the doorman he slipped inside. It was a good crowd, college kids for the most part but a decent smattering of the 30 plus crowd. Tim weaved through to the bar, leant against the stained and pitted wood and caught the barmans eye, held up two fingers.

Two tumblers of bourbon were poured, set down in front of him. Tim reached for one, took a small sip, eyed the patrons casually and waited.

He felt someone behind him, caught a whiff of the familiar subtly spiced and musky aftershave. A long, inked and muscular arm reached past him, picked up the second drink. The warmth and bulk of a large figure leant in behind him, against him. There was space to the side of Tim, they both knew it, but Charlie Maku wasn’t going to sidle up beside him like some barfly.

They drained their drinks almost in unison and Charlie leaned back in to set his glass down, inches away from Tim.

 Charlie turned and very full, warm lips grazed Tim’s ear, a low throaty voice grumbled,” You comin’ over?”

Tim stared at the surface of the bar, the pitted and marked in places, shiny with polish and years of being wiped down in others. He nodded and he felt Charlie tuck two fingers into the back of his combats and tug gently, a signal to follow. Tim dropped the money for the drinks on the bar, turned and followed.


	8. Chapter 8

Charlie’s place was across from the bar which was the first one he’d bought, the reason he had settled in Kentucky rather than head back to Honolulu after his discharge.  Now he owned the bar and a diner across Lexington and he had told Tim he was eyeing up a third property with a mind towards opening a daytime coffee shop and keep targeting the college crowd.

Charlie’s apartment, like his bar, was an old redbrick building packed with the kind of original features that a good realtor would use to jack the price up by thousands of dollars. His place was more of a studio and took up three quarters of the top floor of the building. Inside it was spacious, high ceilings and big windows that flooded it with light by day, framed the view of the city by night.

Charlie had it laid out like a bachelor studio, using a large, open plan living space as his bedroom, turning the actual bedroom into an office. His reasoning was the living room had better views to fall asleep to but Tim had always thought Charlie harboured a faint streak of exhibitionism. Not that he minded the mans habit for going shirtless as often as he could.

Charlie was both a gadget freak and vintage loon. His fridge had a touch screen that helped you order groceries but on a kitchen counter sat a tiny mass of copper and brass tubes that turned out some of the best coffee Tim had ever tasted. All the lights in the place were tasteful and carefully hidden and the decoration covered the majority of Charlie’s interests; his native heritage,  his love for body art and his quiet passion for music and all things blues.

They barely made it through the door before Charlie turned, pulled Tim in close for a long, lingering kiss that left the taste of bourbon and something else sweeter and spicy on Tim’s lips, on his tongue. Charlie’s hand was in the small of his back, the other gripping his belt and he moved them inside, gently pushed Tim against the inside of the closing door, his body long and warm, pressing against him, holding Tim in place so Charlie could enjoy the kiss. His tongue darted forwards and Tim’s met it, his body tingling with need, a heat and pleasant ache growing in the pit of his belly. They stayed joined, Charlie’s hand sliding under his shirt, warm against Tim’s skin, the brief stint in the cold night air doing nothing to lower the heat he radiated at all times.  Tim’s hands were on Charlie’s waist, gripping the edges of his shit, Tim’s fingers brushing the sensitive skin there. Charlie pressed into it. He flexed his hand, flexed the muscles in Tim’s lower back and lifted him a little, pressed him closer into the kiss. Tim groaned into his mouth.

Charlie’s hand brushed the bandage over Tim’s ribs and he paused, drew back and looked a question, finally registering Tim’s bruised face. “Bad day at the office?” he asked, aware of Tim’s occupation. He rose a hand, gently held Tim’s face and turned it to examine the bruises, even more gently stroking a finger along the bruises on his jaw. His tone was light but Tim could see real concern on the other mans face.

“What, this? I tried to put an Ikea table together,” Tim joked, still backed up against the door, Charlie still leaning into him, their faces inches apart.

Charlie looked at him, a level, steady gaze, and Tim shrugged. “Bad guy got in a couple hits,” he said quietly.

“And this?” Charlie’s hand was still under his shirt, resting against his skin but he moved his thumb against the edge of the bandage. “Same bad guy? What he hit you with?”

“Kitchen knife. It’s barely a scratch,” Tim said.

Charlie shook his head. “I remember you breakin’ your arm in Kandahar, callin’ it a bad twist for three days until you lost feeling in your hand,” Charlie told him.

“You don’t believe me you’re welcome to take my shirt off and take a closer look,” Tim told him calmly.

Charlie met his eyes and a wolfish grin spread across his features. He grabbed Tim’s shirt, walked them deeper into the apartment towards the studio style bedroom.

 “You want a drink?” Charlie asked, a redundant question and they both knew it.

Tim nodded, lips still tingling from the kissing and that wolfish look Charlie had given him. He took a moment to compose himself before he spoke again. “I wanted to get blackout,” he admitted.

They had reached the living space, the bed and Charlie turned, gave him a considered, thoughtful look. He gently pushed him down onto the bed so Tim was sitting and leaned in to lay a long, deep kiss on him again. He pulled back.

“I can let you drink, but I can’t let you blackout. I’ll have to find a way to keep you up,” he said with a knowing grin. Charlie chuckled and turned to a kitchenette he had remodelled to represent more of a bar.

Tim felt genuinely calm and kicked off his boots, shrugged out of his jacket and tossed them both aside. He settled in to watch Charlie move around his kitchen, enjoying the view, enjoying the way it took his mind off absolutely everything.

Charlie was a presence and a half, 6’5 inches of carefully honed muscle, broad shoulders tapering to a slim waist. He lived in jeans and a certain cut of black t-shirt that managed to hang around his frame, seemingly drowning it, while simultaneously emphasising the strong chest, broad shoulders and his muscular arms. His arms beneath the shirt were covered in careful, intricate tattoos, traditional black work which, if you knew how to read it, told a story, he had explained to Tim.

He had a head full of thick and dark brown hair he wore jaw length and naturally tousled, always pushed back off his face, leaving an unobscured view of the handsome features, strong jaw, full lips and mischievous hazel eyes. Since Tim had known the man, he always sported a short, neat beard.

 Charlie came over with two tumblers in one large hand, the bourbon bottle in the other. In the low, cosy lighting  He passed Tim his drink, set the bottle down on the floor beside the bed and dropped his long frame into the open space beside Tim, stretching out, kicking out of his own shoes and letting them fall to the floor.

He snatched a remote from the carpeted floor and turned on a sound system. Something more modern than Charlie’s usual fair filled the room, a young guy Tim was just as fond of, the kid channelling Hendrix and Tupac at the same time and turning it into something magical. He hit another button and the TV glowed to life. It was one of those TV’s with built in internet and Charlie opened Netflix and put ‘The Office’ on, sound muted.

“What happened, T?” Charlie asked, watching Tim closely as the smaller framed man settled back against the headboard, pulled one leg under the other. They never discussed how familiar and comfortable Tim was in Charlie’s home, never wanted to highlight it. They knew what Tim’s visit to the bar meant. It was a coping mechanism of sorts. If Tim came over late, ordered two drinks, it meant something was going on. Usually, it meant Tim had killed somebody though every time Tim came over, Charlie would ask the same question. Today was going to be exception.

Tim took a long, deep breath. “My mom died,” he said bluntly, looked up inside to see Charlie’s watchful expression fading to an ‘aah shit’ mask that Tim was almost relieved to see. There was no pity like Raylan and Art had been giving. Charlie knew better, knew pity would make it worse. He knew the history.

Tim leaned over and grabbed his jacket, found his cigarettes. He lit up, tossed the pack to Charlie who fired up his own, reached down besides the bed for an ashtray.

“How?” He asked, sipping his drink.

Tim took a breath. For all his non-response to Art, Tim had genuinely spoken to the detective and had learned exactly what happened to Lucinda Annie Gutterson in her last days and hours.

“Drinking. She went out on a bender and had a bad fall down concrete stairs, got cut and bled out. She had lost her ID, and she was on some med that thinned her blood out so it looked pretty bad. They thought she got murdered,” he said. He thought of what Art had told him, thought about telling Charlie that, too.

Charlie hissed, “Hell of a way out,” he shook his head. His voice was a low rumble that seemed to come from deep in his chest. It had a natural rasp, a hoarseness Tim could listen to all day.

“I had her figured for a car wreck. About my only memories of her are her driving and being drunk. I thought she’d wrap a car around a tree,” Tim said, “When I thought about it at all,” he added, an afterthought.

“How old were you again?” Charlie asked, not for knowing but to remember.

He was asking about the day Lucy left Tim at home and walked out for ever.

“Three. Lived with her those first three years on the road, never came back to town at all. Then one day she drove all the way back, dropped me off and left again. Wasn’t in town more than an hour,” Tim said, finished his bourbon and Charlie passed him the bottle, taking the lid off for him. “She never came back.” Tim took the bottle, leant forwards a little to pour it.

“She know what your dad was like, before she left you?” Charlie asked, watching Tim pour. It was something Art did sometimes if they all went out for drinks. He would watch Tim pour from a beer pitcher, would watch how much Tim took in one dram. One day Tim was going to say something about it.

But Charlie didn’t watch to judge. Charlie was just enjoying watching Tim’s arms move.

Tim nodded. “He’d been arrested for hurtin’ her before she left,” he spoke quietly.

Charlie said nothing, knew better.

Tim took a breath, “today my chief tells me some Fed called. Because of how she died they ran her prints and DNA and there was a response. She…I guess she’s connected to something happened in Texas.”

“Anything exciting?” Charlie asked him, lazily and with an intimate familiarity reaching out and rubbing his hand down Tim’s back and resting it there. “She a bank robber?”

Tim managed a dry chuckle at the fact Charlie’s mind had gone to the same place he had. There was a reason he was friends with Charlie. But the mirth was short lived and his smile faded.

“Murders,” Tim said. “It’s from decades ago, some nowhere border town in they absorbed into somewhere else.”

He trailed off, unsure of what to say. He had nothing else. That was all he knew, every bit of it. Charlie said nothing but the silence wasn’t pregnant. If he was shocked he handled it internally. He wasn’t the type to put Tim on the spot like that, make him deal with someone else’s response to his troubled life.

 He always talked to Charlie. Always. If Raylan, Art or Rachel had ever wanted to how or with whom Tim worked through his shit, it was Charlie. Charlie heard when Tim killed somebody and if there was a doubt or a concern Charlie helped him figure it out.

But saying this even to Charlie felt weird. The words felt heavy coming out of his mouth, clunky and uncomfortable. He hadn’t talked about his mother this much for years. He hadn’t talked about her at all. And now he had to and he was and it was for the worst possible reasons. She was dead, and her background was suddenly a little scary.

Charlie’s hand was on his back, gently massaging. “Can you find out more?” he asked, his tone as always a calm rumble.

“I can talk to the agent,” Tim nodded. “But I’m not sure I want to know more. And he’s hoping I might know a bit of something…”he trailed off, sitting back so Charlie’s arm was loosely pressed between his back and the pillows. Charlie kept massaging and Tim liked it a lot, settled back against it and rested his head back against the headboard.

There wasn’t anyone else he was this relaxed around. He had learned that slowly over many years and a few wasted relationships that Charlie was the only person his guard was totally down around. But he wasn’t in a relationship with Charlie, not formally or officially or any other kind of way.

 Both men considered themselves single, felt free to and did sometimes have other relationships or trysts, but this thing existed between them, this nameless something. The easiest way to describe it was friends with benefits, but it was much more than that, ran far deeper. They both knew that even if all that happened when Tim came over was sex, there was more to it than the physical release.

After their mutual friend and one of Tim’s old boyfriends had died, and Tim had subsequently killed the killer, he had spent a week at Charlie’s place. On that occasion he had been almost resolutely silent and had gotten drunk all of the first three days, before Charlie decided enough was enough and locked away all the booze and made Tim join him on a jog, made him talk and jostled him back to some kind of normalcy.

They had known each other and _known_ each other for over a decade starting as far back as Tim’s time in Basic but there had never been a discussion of what they had. It just was.

Charlie winding up in Lexington had been a coincidence and a surprise. He had gotten there a year before Tim ever did, following business investments and buying up likely looking real estate. He’d taken a shine to the place and stayed and then one day, they ran into each other at a grocery store.

“Do you know anything,” Charlie asked him.

Tim shrugged, resting his tumbler on his stomach. “Nope. Not a damn thing. I mean, if there was something to remember I would,” he said, meaning it. His memory was like a trap that things fell into and never escaped from.

Charlie said nothing again but nodded. He was a man of few words even compared to Tim. The silence continued comfortably and they stared at the TV screen, at the gorgeous but muted cast going through the motions. The music from Charlie’s sound system had switched over to his usual blues, throaty voices and twangy guitar.

“My boss thinks I’ll hurt somebody,” Tim spoke into the silence, hating the words as they came out. “He told Raylan he does.”

Charlie turned and looked at him and did so for a long time in silence.  “How did that come up?” he asked and a lilt of actual surprise in his voice. The surprise was, in Charlie world, the first glimmer of anger.

Tim shrugged. “Between them, no idea. Between me and Raylan, he didn’t mean anything…he was a little drunk and trying to be a friend and he lost control of his mouth.”

“You smack him in it?” Charlie asked him, the lilt gone, anger under control.

Tim shook his head again. “No point. Plenty of people have already tried. He doesn’t learn anything.”

Charlie chuckled. They’d talked of Raylan before.

Tim blinked, licked his lips, anxiety building. It always felt this way when he might say something no one, not even Charlie, knew. “You know I was in high school when Columbine happened,” he spoke, saw Charlie squint while he did the math and nod, mutter ‘oh yeah’.

“About a week after, I got pulled into an office by the principal and security and asked if I wanted to hurt anybody,” Tim said quietly, remembered the conversation, the dawning horror they thought he was like those two kids.

“Because you were smart, quiet and liked guns,” Charlie recalled Tim from their first meeting when Tim was in Basic and Charlie was a couple of years into active service. Tim’s encyclopaedic knowledge of guns and near unflappable calm had been one of the reasons he was eventually selected and put forwards for Ranger school. Charlie had been part of that entire process.

“And I wore a lot of black and listened to Manson and Slipknot…back then everyone still thought it was the music made ‘em do it ,” Tim said. “For English class I wrote dark stuff about death. Before, my teacher thought I had some skill. Afterward she thought I was a psycho. And now my boss does.”

He finished this drink, Charlie draining his own and they both refilled, sat in more silence. Tim was staring at the screen but not seeing it. Despite his lamentations, his mind was pleasantly quiet and calm. That was the Charlie effect at work.

 “You know you’re not a bad person, right?” Charlie finally said.

Tim turned to him, half smiled. He liked it when Charlie said stuff like that. Charlie knew, in some cases literally, where the bodies were buried. He knew most of Tim’s war stories, had been present for most of them. He knew the things Tim had done for his country.

 “I never said otherwise,” he pointed out.

Charlie cocked his head, “still. You know it, right?”

“I’m a saint, Charlie” Tim drawled sarcastically but Charlie took it. Tim finished his drink, eyes on Charlie, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. Charlie reached over and took the tumbler from his hands. He set both their glasses , the ashtray and the bottle of bourbon down on the floor beside them and turned back to Tim with a hungry look in his eye that made Tim’s entire body jolt with need.

Charlie reached out for Tim and pulled him closer with nearly no effort and Tim let him, leant in hungrily for the kiss. Charlie was above him and his hands were on Tim’s body, sliding back up Tim’s shirt and stroking the skin there, brushing over the bandage on his ribs. Tim’s body thrilled, goosebumps spreading across his skin. He reached for Charlie, pulled him closer, slid his hands under Charlie’s loose t-shirt and caressed the soft skin and hard muscle.

Charlie pushed against him and Tim could feel his hardening dick through his jeans, felt his own body respond, a pleasant ache building low in his abdomen. His hands were at Charlie’s belt, quickly unbuckling it, reaching for the button and the fly. Charlie copied him just as quickly as their urges took over and their movements became hurried.

Charlie arched back, away from Tim’s hands, grabbing the bottom of Tim’s shirt to pull up over his head. Tim sat forwards to help him and his shirt came up and then it was gone and his was gone and then Charlie was back to kissing him and their hands ran over bare skin. Tim got the belt, button and fly on Charlie’s jeans undone and Charlie groaned as Tim pushed his hand inside the jeans, under the boxer briefs and took Charlie in his hand, biting Tim’s lower lip just a little.

 Charlie pressed into him, letting his body relax and ease into what Tim was doing, but within seconds he irritably arched back up again, unfastened Tim’s belt and fiddling with the button, the material taut over Tim’s own swollen dick.

The button gave way, Charlie came back to his mouth and Charlie’s hand slid inside Tim’s underwear and for the rest of the night Tim forgot his troubles.


	9. Chapter 9

_Tim was standing in a field surrounded by thick and leafy trees and all around the air stirred and whispered. The light was strange, light and dark at the same time, the sky overhead cloudy and black but the field bright and clear. His mom was sitting in the middle of the field, cross legged in the grass across from Macy Bells. Macy smiled at something Lucy said, something Tim couldn’t hear a single word of. He called to his mother, called to Macy but his voice was a hoarse, useless whisper. He called again and Lucy turned to him, beamed at him in a way he’d never seen in life. She took Macy by the hand and they stood, turning to face him, waving back and speaking to him. Their voices were still silent to him._

Tim’s eyes opened and there was a second of uncertainty. The ceiling wasn’t his own and there was a weight across his chest.

His mind caught up as he heard Charlie breathing slowly beside him and turned to see the big man sprawled on his front, one arm curled under a pillow, the other resting across Tim’s torso.

Tim raised his hand, checked his watch and saw he had three hours to be at work. The movement stirred Charlie and the arm across Tim flexed, held him closer. Tim enjoyed it, wanted to fall back to sleep with Charlie but there was a thought gnawing at the back of his mind, something he had been dreaming about, he thought. He lay still, closed his eyes, tried to picture the dream he’d been having, why it was eating at him.

His mother had looked like he remembered seeing her last; not more than thirty and skinny in way he now realised couldn’t have been healthy. Her auburn hair had been pulled back into a ponytail that left her pixiesh features clear and she wore simple jeans and a t-shirt. Macy’s face had been clean, not smudged with tear streaked dirt and she had been grinning, laughing even, wearing a matching miniature version of Lucy’s outfit.

Tim frowned. That was it. The gnawing thought.

His eyes opened and he moved quietly but quickly out of the bed, Charlie stirring again as he sensed Tim’s movement.

Tim moved around the room, found his clothes and socks and started to quickly dress, Charlie sitting up and turning on the bedside lamp. “You gotta go to work?” he asked, frowning in sleepy confusion at the dark sky outside the window. Even this late in the year, if it was that time of day the sky would be lighter.

“Not yet. I gotta check something out,” Tim said quietly. “I’ll come over tonight.”

But Charlie was like Tim, not just an ex soldier but naturally energetic. Once he was awake he was awake. He rolled out of bed nude and stumbled into the kitchenette, turned on the coffee machine before he came back to the bedroom and found a pair of sweat pants to slip into. “What are you checking out?” he asked as Tim started to dress.

“I want to go by my storage unit,” Tim told him without looking around, concentrating on getting his clothes on. “I might have some of my moms stuff there. Might be able to help the Fed.”

“And you need to go and look for that right now?” Charlie said dubiously.

Tim paused, hesitated, reminded himself this was Charlie. He talked to Charlie.

 “I thought of something. I need to check it out,” he said.

He didn’t need to elaborate. Charlie knew him well enough to understand that if Tim had the need to check something, he wasn’t about to fall back asleep until he checked it. Charlie’s voice came, still thick from sleep,“Want me to come with you?”

Tim nodded, “Sure.”

Charlie crossed the room and stood behind him, so close that unusual natural heat he gave off radiated against Tim’s bare back. “You need to go right this second? Coffee’s brewing.  And I can make you breakfast.”

“I can wait for a coffee, I guess,” Tim said.

Charlie chuckled behind him, “Come take a shower with me.”


	10. Chapter 10

‘Duke’s 24 Hour Storage’ was a five story building with units built into every floor and a freight elevator running up the centre so renters could carry large loads into containers. At this time of the day the guard was a hefty man who at first glance looked to heavy and bulky to be more than a chair surfer, but as Tim and especially the imposing figure of Charlie approached, the guy stood and moved with a turn of speed and lightness on his feet Tim didn’t expect. His hand disappeared under the desk, presumably to concealed weapon of some kind but Duke’s gave their clients photo ID cards and Tim flashed his, explained Charlie was with him. The guy ran Tim’s ID, let them in but pointedly watched the bank of CCTV screens set beneath his side of the counter, sending the message he would see them.

He seemed perturbed by the fact they both looked clean and freshly scrubbed, hair still damp from their shared shower. Tim wondered if the man sensed something between them, wondered if he and Charlie looked, moved like a couple when they were out and about with each other.

Charlie noticed the attention as well and with a wicked smile he walked past Tim towards the elevator, reaching out and grabbing Tim’s hands to pull him along, the gesture gentle and openly affectionate. Tim glanced back to the guard who curled a disgusted lip at them.

Tim and Charlie rode to the third floor in amused silence and Charlie followed Tim down the long, narrow corridors, lit by harsh fluorescents.

 “When my grandparents died we got most of their stuff from the RV and just kept it in the basement at the house,” Tim explained as he walked past the rolling shutter doors painted with large numbers, digging for the key to his. “Then when my dad died I got all the stuff from the house placed in storage. I got it moved out here a few years after I arrived, got it arranged in there and I haven’t been back since.”

“You don’t want it in your place?” Charlie asked him as Tim checked the door numbers, realised his own was just up ahead.

“Maybe some of it. I don’t…I’m not connected to most of it. And I don’t have the space for most of it,” Tim told him, checking his watch. He had time before he had to be at work but they’d used up more than they should have fooling around in Charlie’s shower. That was that Charlie effect again. As urgently as Tim had wanted to get to the storage unit, Charlie was, even temporarily, the calming medicine he needed to get his head back in order. He still wanted to go searching but he felt less frantic about it.

 Tim reasoned he could probably call in and get a late start or even a day off but he couldn’t face the idea of Art’s spiralling concern if he took a day after everything that had already happened.

They reached his door and Tim crouched, opened the lock and rolled up the shutter with help from Charlie. The light from the corridor illuminated a neatly organised space with rows of shelves at the back holding smaller boxes, larger items stacked on the open floor. There was a narrow cleared route around old furniture and storage containers and Tim led the way in, reaching for a light chord that hung from the ceiling on the inside of the door. The light bulb flickered to life but burned out with a faint pop almost at once.

“Well, shit,” Tim sighed. He reached for a box set near the shutters and pulled out a heavy flashlight, turning it on and directing the beam over his families old belongings.

“What are we looking for?” Charlie asked, following Tim as he moved into the dark space.

“A nondescript cardboard box,” Tim looked back at him with an apologetic smile. “Or a couple or three. They have ‘Lucy’ written on them.”

Charlie nodded and they began to look around, Charlie withdrawing his car keys and switching on a small but potent pocket sized flash light of his own. Tim cast the beam of his light over a sturdy wooden dining table he remembered being thrown into as much as he did eating off, a chest high dresser from his old bedroom where once he had stashed porn and a little bit of weed.

 It occurred to him he hadn’t even had time to pack when he left home, wondered if his father had found his stash. Curious, briefly distracted from his mission he crossed over and pulled open a few drawers. Some of his old clothes were still inside, old t-shirts and a pair of jeans sitting atop the bare wood of the bottom of the drawer.

Tim paused, stopped dead at the sight. He had always assumed his father would have cleaned it out, assumed his whole room had been cleaned out. But the clothes were as he had left them the day of the big fight. He remembered missing one of the t-shirts after he left, a faded old Nirvana band shirt he had found in a thrift store.

The jeans had been new, or thrift store new at least and he had worn them just once. Tim checked the lower drawers, found more of his folded clothes untouched by his father or anyone for that matter. Two rolled joints were tucked into a small crack in the wood, dried out and long since useless. Tim crumbled them to dust. He shook his head, pushed away the idea that after he left his room sat untouched, gathering dust, until the day his father died.

He scanned the shelves and the stacked boxes, saw a few old toys, a defunct old Bakelite television that might be worth some money to a collector, stacks of old records he resolved to take with him today. For all his bad memories of much of this stuff he wanted the vinyls.

He heard Charlie call to him and turned around to see the man lifting three large boxes onto the surface of the old dining table, turning them so Tim could see his grandmothers curling handwriting labelling them ‘Lucy’.

Tim crossed the room and passed Charlie his torch, opening the first of the boxes as Charlie settled the strong beam on the contents. The first contained some folded clothes that had been his mothers when she was a kid,  photos of her from her childhood and what her mother had kept of her school work. There were crudely painted drawings, notebooks filled with scrawled, lazy work that heavily featured red pen and teacher made corrections. Tim skimmed the work, once again curious. This kind of trawl through his past was exceedingly rare.

His mother had good ideas but her work was lazy and half assed. Going by the dates in the corner of some of the work and what Tim knew from his grandparents, father and people back home, by that point in her life Lucy was already drinking heavily and starting to abuse drugs. The deterioration was obvious in her work from September and as the academic year had worn on. She’d never been the most attentive student but as the summer had approached she had given up entirely and her notebooks were just a place to scrawl or scribble, quoting song lyrics or doodling cannabis leaves, a seemingly universal phase every American teenager went through.

 Tim set them aside, briefly wondered what had happened to Lucy to make her turn out how she did, if it had been specific events or incidents or just a general disconnect from her education.

Tim reached the bottom of the box but found nothing he needed so refilled, closed it back up and pushed it aside. The second one seemed more likely. It contained his things on top, a copy of his birth certificate replete with tiny baby footprints made at the hospital, school records, his school work and photos of him with his grandparents, all bound together with string and wrapped in stacks of letters between Tim’s grandfather and Lucy. There was a box Tim realised held his old marble collection, another containing baseball cards he’d collected with his grandfather, back when he cared about baseball.

He dug deeper and found souvenirs from those bitter and horrible vacations to see his mother, tchotchkes and trinkets from the various campsites or truck stops, some of their vacations not more than parking the RV in a parking lot for three days and crashing at a local motel. Tim thought of the hated vacations suddenly, got frustrated, scooped out the items, dumped them on the table top. “Hey,” Charlie said softly, “slow down. What are you looking for?”

Under the souvenirs there were Tim’s clothes, a pair of small sneakers he had likely worn as a little kid, jeans and t-shirts he remembered wearing when he was six or seven.

“I had this shirt as a kid that I wore a lot. It was too big for me until I was about ten and then I grew out of it, but I’d had it long before then,” Tim said, listening to Charlie and slowing down, removing the clothes more carefully.

 “My grandma always insisted I wear it when we visit my mother but I never knew why. I asked her,” Tim pulled out more jeans, socks, a jacket he had gotten for Christmas, a set of gloves and matching that he didn’t remember wearing even once. He saw a flash of faded blue, grabbed it and pulled. What he wasn’t saying out loud was that in his dream before he’d awoke, he had seen the shirt. Lucy and Macy had been wearing it.

The t-shirt came free and he turned it around, got a look at the design on the front. “My grandma said it was the shirt I was wearing when mom dropped me off at my dads place.” Tim turned to Charlie, showed him the front.

It was a tourist thing you could probably buy in any rest stop or store along the highway, the cotton cheap but soft, the design screen printed on, faded now but still visible and legible. It was a cheerful image, the outline of the state of Texas overlaid by a smiling, vaguely offensive ‘Bandito’ type character in an oversized sombrero and a poncho and beside him, another smiling character, an all American cowboy in a ten gallon hat and a rodeo shirt with frills.

Beneath them the legend bid the reader; ‘Welcome to South Texas!’.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long, unfortunately I had to return to the loathed real world for a spell.  
> Thank you all for reading and for your kudos and such wonderful, kind comments. It really lights a fire under me to write. You have all sincerely helped me to overcome some pretty hideous writing block I've tangled with for a while now. 
> 
> Next chapter will come much sooner, I promise!

When Raylan had been to college he had developed a little bit of a love for photography. He never indulged in taking his own pictures but he sure liked looking at them. He read up a little, learned what made a good photo, what a well composed image was, how something un-composed candid could be just as artistic as a heavily stylised portrait. For a while he had even dated a photographer until he realised he was more interested in her hobby than in her.

His interest had waned however when he first saw crime scene photos. “God damn,” he curled a lip and winced at the grainy, badly lit image of a horribly damaged skull, a bullet destroying the top of the skull and splattering blood and brain matter everywhere.

A recorded voice told them to turn up ahead.

 “Last chance. I blow by this turn, run for the border and we go hook up with Charlie Weaver and that evidence room cash Winona tried to steal,” Tim was telling him. “When Rachel arrives day after tomorrow we get word to her-”

“Just,” Raylan said sharply as he looked up and glared at Tim, who watched the road, affected a cool nonchalance. Raylan blinked, “turn the wheel,” he said firmly.

Tim tutted and shook his head but he signalled, moved the rental car over to an exit lane. They left the highway, drove deeper into the desert, heading for Anderson, Texas

Raylan closed the case file that sat in his lap. It contained the sole grainy photograph, a half assed report written by the first cop at the scene which sparsely described a mass shooting, uncertain even of the full amount of victims was three or four, switching between a few time as the short paragraph went on. Supposedly a more complete file existed somewhere. The hope was it would be found in Anderson.

Just shy of a half a days drive from the US/Mexico Border, Anderson, Texas had been built around silver mining but its isolation and proximity to the border had seen it transition into a far more successful coach and way station until legal controls over such movement pushed travellers towards the ‘official’ routes. But Anderson had lingered. For a decent amount of time, perhaps more than it would like to admit, it had been a popular haunt with the smugglers, coyotes and traffickers. Their movements and efforts had been aided by the highway patrol who had been firmly and comfortably in the pockets of a Cartel and an gang of US bikers. It was these groups DEA Agent Deluna was hoping to nail by connecting one or both of them to unsolved murders across Texas, and as it turned out, Tim’s mother was involved in one such case.

Tim had been reluctant to go. In fact, he’d been entirely unwilling. But luck was against him. So far one victim of the shooting had been identified as Robert Allen Lee out of Kentucky, formerly a CI for the Marshals Service before he had disappeared some three decades ago, which meant _some_ Marshal was going down there with a case file. Tim had still refused until it had been pointed out that his t-shirt may make him a material witness. He was part of the case now. But Raylan felt bad for the guy.

Truth was it had been an uncomfortable few days for Tim. With the news the DEA case had become, in part, Marshal business, it had been difficult to keep entirely private that Tim had recently lost his mother and through her had a personal connection to what something that had become work. Though the specific details were hidden from all but Art, Rachel, Raylan and Vasquez, even that had pushed Tim out far beyond his comfort level. He had been quiet, noticeably so even for him and on their drive down from the airport to Anderson, the few times he had spoken had been half joking suggestions they run for Mexico. He didn’t actually want to run away. He just didn’t want to go, either. He’d rather be back in Lexington. Raylan didn’t blame him. 

“Just,” Raylan said into the silence of the car as desert, cacti and craggy rocks flicked past their windows, “think of it as looking out for your mom. Officially you’re down there to make sure they handle her stuff the right way and don’t pin the crime on her.”

Tim turned to stare at him slowly, the car cruising along the ruler straight road for an uncomfortably long time. “I never said you had to like looking out for your mother. But…I didn’t like looking out for Arlo. You’re, at best, a dutiful son.” Raylan reminded him.

Tim’s eyes narrowed a fraction but he turned back to the road, reached for the radio. “You think we’re outside the cult band?” he asked, neatly changing the subject. A disturbing amount of the radio they could pick up on these isolated roads had been Fire and Brimstone religious stuff, the kind that condemned and damned everyone who wasn’t living in and at Church seven days a week.  

Raylan shrugged, let Tim surf the stations until he found something new, some isolated sounding man talking about strange lights over the desert, outside all known flight paths. “You think he ever considers they’re Cartel planes?” Raylan asked after a half hour of the mans disconnected rambling about aliens and interdimensional beings.

“I remember seeing lights once. Side of some mountain, two days in to this shit watch and I stretched, looked up…it was a no fly zone and this was not a drone, either…nothing we made moves that way,” Tim said.

Raylan stared at him but Tim shrugged in lieu of explaining further, “The Deserts’ a weird place.”

Raylan heard the capital letters fall into place. “How weird?” he heard himself asking.

Tim paused a moment, thought about it. He took a breath. “Really, really fucking weird.”


	12. Chapter 12

Carl Deluna had played football once, Tim was dead certain of it. He was an easy six four and broad through the chest and shoulders, but moved like an athlete, light and nimble on his feet. He greeted the in the foyer of a shiny new Sheriff’s Department, an oversized, ultra modern block that utilised more brushed steel and glass than could be healthy. “Deputy Gutterson, Givens,” DeLuna was smiling warmly, holding out a broad hand to be shaken. “Great to finally get to meet.”

Tim shook Deluna’s hand, was just as polite and personable as he had to be but he wasn’t going to pretend he was happy to be there. He let Raylan do his thing, smile and charm and talk away. They made small talk about the journey down, empty inanity Tim could barely stomach on a good day.

But today he was in no mood to make nice. He didn’t much like or trust Deluna. It wasn’t the mans fault. He was doing his job, trying to catch bad people who did bad things. It was just Tim’s bad luck that with a phone this man he’d never met nor crossed paths with, had altered the trajectory of Tim’s life. Deluna was basically just the messenger and couldn’t rightly, fairly be blamed for anything that had happened. But Tim didn’t let that stop him. He needed someone, some physical person to be mad at. Lucy was dead, Raylan had learned too well how Tim’s moods worked and wasn’t rising to baited attempts to start an argument. So Tim would hate Deluna. If the universe gave him a better alternative, he would take it.

“You get checked in at the motel yet?” Deluna asked Raylan, glancing to Tim in a slightly hopeful, eager way as if hoping he might join the conversation sometime soon.

“Naw, we thought we’d come right over first, get the ball rolling, real eager to solve the case,” Raylan’s shit eating grin was a treat, gave Tim something to amuse himself with as Deluna turned to the deputy at a desk behind them and got the signed into the building and began to lead them deeper inside.

“Either of you been to Texas before?” Deluna was asking, smiling like he part timed as a tourist agent. He was wearing his mid fifties well but softening around the edges, his gut starting to push over his belt and lines creasing his dark brown eyes that were lit through with a keen intelligence.

“Couple times,” Raylan said, turning somewhat pointedly to Tim, making a series of expressions to suggest he join the conversation already.

Tim met his eyes, held his gaze, psychically hoping Raylan or perhaps Deluna might remember why Tim was here at all.

 It hit Raylan and his eyebrows twitched. He looked like he might laugh and Tim was actually half relieved and didn’t understand why. It was a small shared moment, the expression vanishing from Raylan’s face as Deluna turned to them, realisation dawning about his question.

“Shit. Sorry,” he spoke to Tim. “I meant…like for work or,” he trailed off, glancing to Raylan who was pretending to look serious.

“It’s fine,” Tim said, affecting the icy calm he so often found comfort in. He could see Raylan behind Deluna, impatiently rolling his eyes like an angry parent frustrated by their sullen kid. Tim didn’t care, looked back at Raylan with the words ‘what?’ etched across his features.

Deluna stared, blinked as he waited for Tim to go on, realised enough time had passed to make it weird if Tim did suddenly start speaking and blinked, thrown off balance. Tim got a vague guilty pleasure out of making the man uncomfortable, ignored Rachel’s voice in his head reminding him to be nice.

“So your case,” Raylan asked, nodding greetings to the few curious deputies lingering at the station. They were looked over, openly examined by the locals who wore expressions ranging from friendly and welcoming smiles, calm indifference down to open suspicion. “How are you figuring Lucy fits in?”

Deluna smiled, motioned for them to follow. “Let me show you what I got,” he told them.

They cut through a bullpen twice as big as it needed to be, several desks empty, unoccupied, the town and force too small to need this much space. Tim wondered idly how it came to be built, if some overzealous mayor had been trying to impress, perhaps.

Deluna led them to one of a few more private rooms, what appeared to be an interview room repurposed for Deluna’s needs. Tim had to believe there was an available office in the oversized building. “They didn’t have anything else free?” Raylan asked as if he had read Tim’s mind.

“Probably they did,” Deluna shrugged, unlocking the door and leading them inside. “But there’s a chance this case…it looks bad for them. Bad investigating or corruption. We don’t know yet. I might be the enemy, so they’re hazing me I guess.”

“That the only key?” Raylan asked, affecting a far lighter tone than he could have.

Deluna chuckled darkly. “I sure as shit hope so.”

Inside the room was a decent size, windowless and lit only with harsh fluorescents. Deluna had been given a whiteboard which he had moved in front of the observation mirror and Deluna had begun tacking up photos of the crime scene and dead bodies, copies of the statements and notes from the autopsies, such as there had been, creating a rough timeline of the crime. He had drawn empty squares in spaces where it appeared something was missing, written notes within of what he thought it could be, a photo, a statement, analysis of some evidence, information on where these items could supposedly be found.

Tim was glancing around when his eyes fell on a stack of boxes neatly piled in one corner. There was something ‘police’ about the boxes, the cardboard thicker than average, actual lids rather than folding flaps. They had been taped closed, marked as ‘evidence.’

Tim froze, nerves jangling in a way he hadn’t expected. “That’s…for you,” Deluna said, “addressed to you. It’s from California.”

It was Lucy. It was things, her belongings. “That it?” Tim heard himself ask, wondered if is voice sounded as plaintive to them as it had to him, prayed it hadn’t.

“So I’m told,” Deluna was saying. “They thought she might have a storage unit but nothing shows up. This seems to be everything.”

Tim wished he was alone. Was glad he wasn’t. The boxes didn’t even take up half the room. They didn’t even take up a quarter. It was his mothers entire life condensed down to a few yard of cardboard. He felt the weight of the gaze of the other men in the room, felt an unspoken expectation in the air. “I can get straight into it, you want?” Tim said into a silence growing increasingly tense. He would rather not get straight into it. He’d rather play dentist to a tiger than get straight into it.

“Hey, no rush. You can take all the time you need,” he heard Deluna say, detected a sincerity in his tone.

There was a shrill ringing and Deluna apologised, fished a phone from his pocket and excused himself from the room, leaving Raylan and Tim alone. Tim became even more acutely aware of Raylan’s presence, turned away from the boxes leaned back against the interview table. He averted his eyes from the evidence of the murder, too. He didn’t want the details, not just yet.

The silence grew, got thicker, heavier. Raylan took an audible breath.  “Hey,” he said and Tim looked up, looked at him. “You okay?”

Tim debated lying but he couldn’t see a real reason why. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, feeling a rare relief in sharing something about himself so personal.

Raylan looked over at the boxes. “It’s not a lot,” he said. There was something in how he said it, an understanding, no judgement. “Arlo built his house, lived in it forty years and when he died I put his stuff in about this many boxes. Everything else was my moms, or Helen’s,” Raylan said. “Got to wonder how many boxes I’ll get.”

Tim paused, gave it some thought. “My comics will fill more than that,” he half turned his head, indicated his mothers things.

Raylan chuckled, “I don’t even think I’ll make half that. I been living in motels too long.”

“I have wondered if that’s your only pair of jeans,” Tim teased, even more relieved that Raylan so smoothly let the subject move on, both of them preferring it this way.

The door opened and Deluna ducked back in, sliding his phone back into a suit pocket. “Sorry about that. That was the ME, as luck would have it. We exhumed the bodies and he’s been working on the. He said he’s expecting an email with the results of the new DNA profiles. If we head over in another hour or so we can start getting some answers.”


	13. Chapter 13

On a dry summer day in the mid nineteen eighties, a car full of college kids on a road trip had stopped at the Golden Sands Motel. The motel was the sole sign of civilisation for miles around, a lone ship in a sea of sand and unforgiving desert sun.

The kids had found the place silent and seemingly empty, but for one beat up car parked near the managers office. There had been a smell, a rotten odour and a growing sense of dread but the curious young people had explored. They found the manager first, dead of a heart attack, clutching a rifle like he was about to defend the Alamo and when they explored further, they found room Five.

“Room five was the actual crime scene. There was no sign anyone got near the motel owner but he was ninety two years old and it looks like he fired off a couple barrels, took some return fire before he keeled over, heart attack,” Deluna was sitting at the edge of the small table they had taken up in an isolated corner of the diner he had directed them to find, hands clutching his half forgotten grilled chicken sandwich a few inches over his plate while he spoke.

Raylan and Tim sat around the table and tried to ignore the open, curious glances from the local patrons. Deluna was still relatively new in the area but his interactions with the wait staff had been warm and friendly as he had been there long enough to start getting to know people. Raylan and Tim were total strangers and stood out for more reasons than that.

 Tim had suggested Raylan leave the hat, his favoured white Stetson, in the motel room, felt that even in a small town in Texas it was uncomfortably conspicuous. But now he regretted it. Raylan was Hollywood good looking and hatless, a little unkempt, he cut an even more attractive figure. Tim managed to glance around the restaurant without anyone knowing he had done so, saw the other patrons were still observing them. The waitress who had delivered their drinks and food was smiling and kind but her eyes were suspicious, curious.

 “Room five was where the carnage happened. Bodies on the ground, bullet holes in every visible surface. I’ve run down one report by a deputy that says they figure a shotgun and an automatic were used. Any victims who didn’t die immediately bled out…” Deluna explained. “The story I’ve pieced together so far, is that two or three people in wheeled vehicles approached the motel, headed for Room 5 and fired into anyone upright. If they got inside first or shot through the door, I need more of the crime scene photos to decide that.”

“Are there more?” Raylan was asking. He had eaten while Deluna spoke, had cleared away his own food in no time at all. “Photos?”

Deluna tilted his head, made an expression, “In theory,” he said, making a face like the thought gave him a bad taste in his mouth. “This is what I’m dealing with. When this case happened, you had cops, Border Patrol and Deputies all on the take from one side or the other. The fact there’s a case file at almost an anomaly.”

“Same way they got buried and not burned?” Raylan asked. “Were they known to someone around here?”

Deluna shook his head ‘no’, “out of town strangers. Even their car, had Oregon plates but when one Deputy did run some background it turned out it was twenty years old and had been getting sold cash in hand to new owners for most of that time. The last known recorded sale was five years before the murders and no connection was found to Texas or any of the victims, based on what little they knew.”

Raylan sat back in his seat, frowning as his mind worked over what little was known while Deluna finally made a start on his food. Tim had a plate stacked with chilli fries he had no appetite for. He hadn’t had one before the even came over but here he was. He had entertained the idea of doing like he would as a kid, push the food around on the plate so it looked like he had eaten, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t even reach for the fork. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the waitress eyeing his plate, anxious or frustrated it was going to waste.

Sitting silent, refusing to eat, other more involved people talking around him and a woman staring at him and getting mad. He felt like a kid, visiting with Lucy Gutterson and hoping sheer unbridled stubbornness would end the trip sooner. It was oddly fitting.

 “So how does that come around to Narcos and biker gangs?” Raylan was asking Deluna. “How you figure they’re involved? Geographic convenience?”

Deluna nodded, swallowed his food, washed it down with his soda, “in part. Mainly the reason is Hermann Buhler.”

“Herman?” Raylan asked.

“With two ‘n’s. Like Goering,” Deluna clarified. He paused, set down his food. A look crossed his face, a real anger, real hatred for his subject. It wasn’t healthy for a lawman to hate a perp like that. Tim didn’t like it much, but said nothing, not yet.

 “Hermann Buhler, is a god damn piece of work, “Deluna managed not to snarl the words, but only just. “Aryan biker psychopath with a mean streak like a bear with a head full of bad teeth. He hates anyone that can’t trace their blood back three centuries and if every member of your family isn’t from the _vaterland_ you’re shit to him. He’s a fucking sack of shit, murdering, drug dealing, raping son of a bitch and an asshole.”

“Sounds like a charmer,” Raylan mused, glancing at Tim as if to ask if he had noticed the chance coming over Deluna. They shared a moment of eye contact, of concern.

 “Daddy was a proud Klansman and his mama got life in prison when he was 5 because she tossed hot oil over a couple black kids and one of them died from a secondary infection. A point of pride in the Buehler household is the fact Hermann’s first word was…” he paused, winced. “Starts with an N, rhymes with trigger,” he finished.

“Oh so he comes from good stock, too,” Raylan drawled, the sarcastic punctuations finally pulling Deluna up, bringing him back from whatever void he teetered on the edge of. “Good to know.”

Deluna nodded, chortled but it was forced. “Yeah, real pack of wolves these people. Hermann’s pushing fifty now, still the most dangerous asshole around… but he made his bones for his gang, the Tombstones, years ago. His MO for taking out folks he didn’t think so highly of was ridin’ up on them, alone or with friends,  carrying his shotgun. He would kick in their door and fill the room with bullets before anyone even figured out he got there. Lot of people, the last thing they heard was his motorbike rolling up on them.”

His words finally forced Tim to look up, speak up, his interest piqued at once. “Well, gee,” he said and Deluna nodded.

“Yep,” he said. There was a flash of something in his eyes, something over eager, like the idea the Marshals were coming onside was feeding something Deluna was nursing. “He was incredibly active in this area thirty years ago, working his way up the ranks as the go to guy for any show of strength via explosive violence. Now he runs the gang.”

“You got anything concrete, forensic to tie him to this?” Tim asked. Suddenly, the food smelled okay to him. He scooped up his fork, dug in. Maybe if he could treat this like just work, just ‘the job’ it might be easier. “Beyond some admitted similarities.”

“Not as yet. That’s where you two come in. Your CI we identified could have had contact with him” he nodded to Raylan, turning back to Tim, “or something in your mothers belongings might suggest they crossed paths. I’m confident he’s a part of this. I need you guys to help me prove that.”

There was silence for a while as they ate, finishing their food and letting the waitress clear their plates. Deluna checked his phone after it buzzed in his pocket. “ME’s ready,” he said, tone far lighter than the situation required. “Says come over when ever.”

Tim felt a strange nervousness as they paid and got ready to leave, a roiling anxiety in his gut. Pretending this was ‘just work’ was failing him, quickly.


	14. Chapter 14

 The ME’s office also served as a small forensics and was situated some miles outside of town and was as shiny and new as the Sheriff’s station in town. It was meant to act as a central lab and funeral home for several small, surrounding towns, reducing the need for such spaces in their own, and ideally limiting the interference with bodies and evidence which had plagued the region for so long.

They drove in Deluna’s car for the opportunity to talk shop some more, though Tim was happy to take the back seat and tune out, let the older men take up the slack in that respect. He was content to listen to the playlist Deluna was playing through the speakers, recognising ‘Explosions In The Sky’ and nearly, almost grinning about it.

Perfect driving music, he had to admit. He rested his head back against the seat and stared out of the window as the small buildings of Anderson quickly and suddenly gave way to open desert. He realised how island like the town was in a great oceanof sand. Overhead the sky was clear and blue and there was so very much of it. There was no sky like a desert sky, no place like a desert.

As much as the reasons for being here ate at him, Tim felt a kind of comfort at being back in the desert. It was the same part of him he knew would be relieved if he re-enlisted tomorrow. It was a tiny part but an intense one, the side of him that craved the adrenaline and the thrill of War, but more deeply and powerfully, craved the silence.

Tim had been a sniper. Though not always, much of his war was spent silent on mountainsides and he missed it.

He missed the long and endless quiet.

Across the sands sometimes swept with dry brush and shrubbery Tim saw the mountains and ranges, craggy and harsh as they broke up through the sand and reached for the skies. He felt grit and warm stones under his hands and remembered the smell of Afghan sand. The sun was beginning to fall from the sky, a slow tumble that was changing the light and lengthening the shadows and the sky in front of them was bleeding away from blue. It would be a while yet before the real night fell but a Texan night would be dark and starlit. Tim thought again of his other desert, of the wide open skies he had spent nights watching. It was hard to sleep under all the open space when you could see so many stars, so far into the night sky. You didn’t want to miss anything.

The car moved, turned more sharply than it had yet and Tim glanced around, realised they had arrived at a long, low building that sat in the middle of nowhere. The façade was stylish but discrete, a funeral home for those who needed it. But Deluna drove by the public entrance to a parking lot around the back that seemed purpose built for cops those there on business.

They entered through a less attractive door, checking and signing in with a bored but prepared looking security guard who wore a gun on her hip and a look in her eye like she would use and use it well if you made her.

Deluna walked confidently through a corridor, past viewing rooms, a doorway that advertised its self as leading to the smaller forensics labs. Deluna passed by, led them onwards.

The ME’s lab was a cold and sterile place, but that wasn’t a surprise. Tim’s nose wrinkled, eyes watered at the powerful reek of bleach and sterility that plagued the place. Beneath it was the familiar, fouler stench of death. Tim wondered if ME’s and their assistants every acknowledged that as much bleach or air freshener or scented candles you might place around the place, the scent of death always lingered. He had dated and ME once, for a month, before the faint smell of rotting dead bodies that the man carried with him began to fuck with Tim’s head. He’d started having nightmares, broke it before they got to be something he couldn’t shake off.

“Doc? Solverson?” Deluna called out as they entered the room. Storage units for the bodies were built into one wall with half a dozen examination slabs laid out in formation in the centre of the room, each one with its own set of lights, scales, attached trays for the examination equipment. Three of the slabs were taken up, vague body like shapes covered with sheets. Even covered up Tim suspected these were what remained of the Golden Sands victims. The forms beneath the clean white cloths were too angular, to narrow to be flesh covered. They were skeletal.

The other three slabs lay empty. Tim saw two still had the plastic sheeting and peel off covers that they added at the factory to prevent the shine getting scratched off the new equipment. They had never even been used.

“Hey, Carl,” a warm greeting sounded and a middle aged, greying doctor emerged from a small back office, grinning a greeting to Deluna, reaching out to shake his hand.

“Doc,” Carl smiled back, “This is US Marshal Raylan Givens and this is Marshal Tim Gutterson.”

The doctors eyes snapped to Tim and internally he groaned. “The man himself, huh?” he asked. “I bet you got a lot of questions about your mom huh?”

Tim fixed him with a glower. “Not really.” He knew his tone was dry as the sands outside, saw even Raylan half turn towards him as if to try and signal to him, remind him these folks weren’t the enemy. “I mean,” he tried, checking his tone a little, dialling back the attitude, “I didn’t know her so well. I’m just here to try and provide some context.”

Solverson nodded. “Well, lets hope this is the first step, huh?”

“Doc,” Raylan cut in and even Tim turned to glance at him. “We been driving a _long_ time, my friend here is…how is Lucy Gutterson connected?” his tone was conciliatory but it was blunt, an unspoken apology at the fact he was jumping over any polite niceties or other show of good manners.

Tim felt himself nodding, turning back to the doctor. “Yeah. What he said.”

Solverson glanced to Deluna but wha ever he had planned to say, he didn’t. “I understand this must be…difficult. Finding out something like this…”he stopped, expression shifting into professional mode. “If you’ll allow me the time to frame this in some context,” he said. “Thirty years ago the bodies were taken to the original Anderson ME’s office. The ME at the time was a fired two years later for his drinking problem but it had been an open secret he was  lit every day for close to twenty years. He was functional for most of that but towards the end, he wasn’t. Anywhere else that would have seen his old cases reopened, re-examined but that option wasn’t available at the time,” he said the last with a cynical shrug and eye roll. “Between the corruption and the incompetence it took some time to figure out what had happened and collate all the outstanding parts of the case file and create any kind of cohesive idea of what happened. Until just recently, we knew your mothers DNA was matched with this case. But ‘til today, we didn’t even know if the DNA came from a victim, a killer, a week old tissue out of the waste paper basket…”

 The he turned away and glanced around, spotted a file resting on a table nearby and walked across to get it. “ What we figure, is it seems like the bodies got a cursory examination to establish everyone died of gunshot wounds or resulting injuries and blood loss from said,” his tone nearly automatically became professional, an oddly familiar drone that all ME’s seemed to take on, like the way all airline pilots talked in the same voice. Tim had heard once they all emulated one guy, some famous airline pilot. “Some young assistants name is on a lot of the paperwork, though we’ve not been able to track him down. It seems as if the assistant had some good sense about him because he’s the one took prints, blood samples, got a good roll of photos…problem was a lot of that shit got stored and never tested and all the paperwork never got properly collated into one cohesive file.”

“We’ve been crawling through old evidence lockers, contacting retired cops might have a box in their garage somewhere, digging through decades worth of shit,” Deluna added.

Tim was listening, but his eyes were fixed the sheet covered remains. There was a sense of growing…the word ‘doom’ seemed extreme, but a faint dread, an anticipation of something terrible. This wasn’t a mistake. He had been harbouring the hope his mother’s DNA would be easily explained, that it was on a glass or a cup because she stayed at the motel before the murders and they had shitty housekeepers. But the doctor was taking too long.

 Tim reached back to a few weeks ago and found a moment when everything had been okay. He hadn’t known his mother was dead, hadn’t known anything about her history. He had been just another Marshal, sitting bored at his desk, shooting the shit with Rachel about her attending a parent-teacher conference for her nephew. It had been a nice moment while she stressed over the boys poor grasp of Math but he made her feel better by offering to tutor the kid some. Rachel’s mother had all but adopted Tim after the first time they met, when he was an underweight, shell shocked vet living off beer to drown the memories and red bull to stave off the violent nightmares. He liked spending time at their house. He remembered how he felt in that moment, held on to it, gripped it tight.

Everything was about to change. He could sense it coming like a god damned freight train. Everything was about to change and the doctor was still fucking talking.

“Between myself and Deluna we’ve found pieces of the original case file all over the place. Some was stored in the old ME’s office some had been stored back at the Sheriff’s station. Which,” Solverson held up the file he’d picked up. “Last two sets of prints came back. I got them uploaded today so…see what we get.”

“Sir,” Tim heard himself speak, tone terse, barely holding back his mood. He hoped he came across as angry and not as close to blind panic as he nearly felt. Everything was about to change.

“Sorry,” Solverson said. “The DNA sample we found and ran first…it came from one of the bodies.” He followed Tim’s gaze to the covered remains. “But not one of these. There was a fourth body. We keep him stored away…kinda depresses everyone.”

Solverson walked over to one of the body lockers, opened it up, drew out the rolling gurney, the sheet covered slab.

Tim’s heartbeat filled his ears but he could still hear Solverson speak. “Male. At the time of death he was about thirty pounds, three feet tall. Hair was black, eyes blue, Caucasian. Could have been on a better diet when he died, fast food isn’t good for a boy so young. Shot here, here and one grazed the skull. Any of the three could have killed him, toddlers don’t have high tolerance for bullets. He was found under the body of the only female victim,” Solverson went on to say. “Diagram I found of their wounds, I figure she was holding him, tried to throw herself around or on top of him. He died in her arms.”

Could anyone else hear his heart beating? Tim glanced at Deluna who stared at the body. At Raylan, who stared at Tim. “I don’t understand,” he spoke, voice harsh and rougher than he liked.

Solverson looked up, “This is the body we matched to Lucy Gutterson. This is her son. Your brother.”


	15. Chapter 15

He remembered ‘My Girl’. He remembered long nights in the car, staring out at the passing sky, too small to see much else.

He remembered his grandparents RV and the long journeys to visit with her, those wasted hours of his life.

He remembered one place, a beach, where his mother seemed fractionally more at peace with the universe than before or since.

He remembered photos around his fathers house, a young couple clutching a swaddled baby, both tired and nervous.

He did not remember a brother.

+

Tim had ridden back from the ME’s office in silence. He had reached their motel room in silence and when Raylan had disappeared, come back to the room with bags of food and even more bags of alcohol, Tim had eaten in silence too.

This wasn’t the same sullen sulk as before. This wasn’t because he was angry, not any more. He just didn’t know what to say. He had a brother. Had being the operative word. Had. Past tense. The boy was dead and Tim didn’t even know his name.

He knew when Raylan had called Rachel because she called Tim right after. He answered, was monosyllabic while she was kind and gentle and caring, apologising that she wouldn’t make it down to Texas the day after like they had planned. She had promised to do what she could from Lexington, to contact Solverson and get copies of everything he had. She promised to ID the little boy, to give his brother a name as quickly as she could. With a name, she had suggested, Tim might find it easier.

Tim had agreed but he was lying through his teeth, begged off the call as quickly as he could and dropped his phone on the bed, aware Raylan was pretending not to be watching him.

When Tim had finally looked over, Raylan’s face had asked a question and Tim had answered. “I don’t have a brother.”

Raylan made a face like he had just thought of a very poor joke but thought better than to say it aloud.

“I mean,” Tim figured out what Raylan had nearly said. “I never did. I don’t remember him.”

Their room had something of a balcony, a small strip of patio space out of the back of the row of first floor rooms, just wide enough for a small table, two picnic chairs. The motel was on the absolute edge of town and the view from the balcony was miles of unspoiled desert and wide open skies, bleeding slowly to black as the inky night spread across from one horizon to the next.

Tim wanted to smoke, had a restless energy about him he didn’t know what to do with. He picked up his tumbler and his smokes and after a thought he grabbed the entire bottle of bourbon and took it with him to the balcony, set himself up with a seat and a view.

He lit up and took his first drag, debated calling Charlie when he could get some time alone to talk. He settled into one of the picnic chairs, gazing out at the view of the desert, at the darkening sky. The stars would be out soon and he was glad of it. He wished he had thought to bring his telescope.

He heard movement, saw Raylan step out and join him. The older man settled into the free seat and joined Tim in silently enjoying the view. “Look at that,” he breathed and Tim had to nod.

They drank some more and Tim smoked some more and the silence between them grew comfortable. Tim felt a centre of calm blooming, felt the nervous energy fade away, appreciated Raylan’s shared fondness for quietness every now and again, his understanding of how Tim managed his issues.  

Tim finished his cigarette, lit up again faster than he normally did and started on the next one. He exhaled a plume of smoke and to his surprise Raylan’s hand reached out, motioned in a universally understood way for the cigarette. Tim passed it over, watched Raylan take a drag and nearly faint with pleasure.

 “Mother of God,” Raylan groaned in relief and near ecstasy.

“How long since you quit?” Tim asked him, a gentle jab.

“I don’t care,” Raylan said with a smile as he let the smoke curl out of his nose and mouth, handing it back over.

Tim took it back, took a drag.  “Don’t tell Rachel,” he told his older friend. “She’ll whup my ass if she thinks I got you hooked.”

“I’ll tell her you used peer pressure and harsh language. Called me a pussy. Said I couldn’t sit at the cool table at lunch,” Raylan joked.

“You can’t,” Tim said back. “Winona make you quit?” Tim asked and he knew Raylan detected the note in his tone. Tim had been careful how and what he had said, would never openly disparage or insult anybodies ex-partner, but had made it clear he had Opinions about Raylan’s ex. He had respect for her in a lot of important ways, wasn’t crazy about her in others. She had a funny way of being a drain on Marshal resources that Tim couldn’t wrap his mind around, and a hold over Raylan that was even more confusing. He shot a glance over to Raylan hoped he wasn’t going to get mad about it, but the man wore a thoughtful, amused smile.

“Probably,” Raylan allowed and Tim chuckled. The silence fell again, comfortable and safe and Raylan reached out, took the cigarette from Tim’s hands a second time. The second drag was smaller and his chest finally caught up, hitched a little, but he handled it, passed the smoke back.

They watched the desert a while, watched the sky bleed from pink to purple, the faintest edges already dark blue and black.

“Remind you of over there?” Raylan asked in a long drawl and Tim felt himself nodding casually as he drew on his cigarette.

“The quieter moments,” he said, half joking, saw and matched Raylan’s half smile.

Once again they fell silent, drank and smoked in silence. They found a natural routine forming almost instantly, the sharing of the cigarette. Tim normally liked to hold on to his smokes, found it gave him something to do with his hand. But sharing one with Raylan was a strange and rare treat. It was something else they shared, something that wasn’t abusive or absent parents, or their uncanny skills for killing people. Drinking and smokes, shared vices they could bond over. They mutually refilled their drinks as they finished them, no one person responsible for how much they might eventually imbibe. Their moods settled further as the bourbon took effect but Tim knew Raylan would broach it eventually. If he’d spoken with Rachel she would have insisted. Even if she hadn’t, Raylan had a kinder streak than he liked to admit.

“You know I had a sister?” Raylan spoke and Tim turned to stare at him, felt his eyes go wide. Much, too much was known about Raylan’s childhood, private life and background. This was not. “For a day. Aunt Helen told me about her. I wasn’t two yet, Arlo was inside over something, got mom pregnant just before he got picked up. He never even knew about her. She came along much too early. Kind of early doctors can’t help,” Raylan said, trailing off. “I never knew her, didn’t know any of it even happened until years later. Mom had her cremated, scattered the ashes over the mountains. She never had a birth certificate or a death certificate, that was how early she came. Legally, she never existed. Thinking on it, between me, Winona and now, you, we’re the only people who know she ever did.”

Tim frowned deeply. He wasn’t sure what to do with the information but it hit him hard that Raylan had chosen to tell him, to share it. It meant something. He wasn’t sure what, yet. But he knew Raylan was trying to reach out and he appreciated it.

 “She get a name?” Tim asked quietly. He wondered what his brothers had been.

Raylan was quiet a moment, sipped his drink and savoured the view some more.  “Willa.”


	16. Chapter 16

_Raylan groaned, pain, true real pain wrapping around his skull like a snake, a living, moving thing that tightened and twisted each time he moved. It flowed from his skull, into his shoulders, his back, every muscle twitch flaring up his spine, blooming behind his eyes, searing through him._

_His vision blurred and faded and he smelled blood and sweat, the pungent tang of BO, motor oil, vomit and beer, everywhere, beer, stale and fresh. He could hear faint voices talking over the radio, the grow of an engine, hum of tyres on a road._

_His face was mashed in to hard metal coated with grit and dust, biting into his skin. He tried to move, felt his hands bound, the awareness bringing new pain, aches in his shoulders from being dragged back, his hands cold and numb, wrists bitten into by tape or rope or something else. His legs were loose , untied, but he realised his shoes and socks were gone._

_He tried to turn his head, move it so he could see further, fought the nausea that rolled in his gut. He could sense a figure next to him, a mostly warm body that tremored slightly. He moved, lifted, turned his head and rested it down again as quickly as he could, the small movement leaving him dizzy and sick._

_To his right lay Tim. Flat on his back, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling, skin so ashen and pale that Raylan’s mind coldly accepted the younger man was dead in the same time it took to remember Tim was warm and shaking._

_Tim’s eyes fluttered and he gasped, licked his dry, pale lips. He closed his eyes like he was tired or dizzy, opened them again, shifted his weight. He seemed unaware Raylan was watching, that he was even present at all._

_Not dead, but hurt or high or not all there. Raylan opened his mouth, started to speak but there was movement behind him. Someone knew he was awake, or they had been attracted by Tim’s stirrings. They moved and he felt weight, bulk lean over them both. A glove hand grabbed Tim’s jaw, gripped so tight they dug into the flesh. Tim grabbed at the wrist, tried to twist away but seemed weakened somehow. His eyes got even wider as whatever he was seeing inside his head overlapped with whatever was in front of him. Someone laughed._

_Raylan wanted to speak but he was tired now. A heaviness crept over him. His eyes closed and he was gone back to the dark._


	17. Chapter 17

Rachel had hoped to get back to Texas sometime quite soon but she had hoped it might be under better circumstances than her current ones. She was tired and bored from driving, her back getting stiff from hours behind the wheel, but she could see the border of Anderson up ahead. The town wasn’t and then very abruptly was, no farm steads or smaller houses signalling a town up ahead, just miles of open desert and then all of a sudden, a town.

A dusty sign bade her welcome, advertised a population just barely reaching over a hundred. She passed the motel, made a beeline for the station. The boys weren’t picking up and she wanted to have _words_ with Tim and Raylan.

She had called Raylan before she boarded her plane, broke the good news she could make it down after all, albeit many, many hours later than originally planned. She hadn’t told him why she made the decision, why she insisted Art find a way to manage with one less Marshal than he already had. It wouldn’t have been right to tell him before Tim. It was bad enough Art knew before their youngest Marshal.

Raylan had filled her in on what they had learned about the case, what their theory was after a day of collating and reviewing the evidence and the information they began to discover about the victims; the murdered CI, Robert Allen Lee was the most likely suspect in a theft of drugs and cash from a meet up of several criminal biker gangs back in the mid 80’s. Lee had vanished from Kentucky shortly before the DEA had begun hearing intelligence on the theft but no one had any reason to connect the two cases back in ’85, and it wasn’t like bikers had contacted police.

Lee had a long history with two of the other victims, a married couple who based themselves out of California, made their living as agents for Coyotes and people smugglers. Raylan had explained the couple travelled up and down California year round, which Tim had speculated was where they met Lucy, and only returned to Texas when they had to for business, when they had someone to smuggle into or out of Mexico. It appeared as if Lee may have been hoping to cross the border when someone caught up with him. Lucy’s presence was lit through the case in the use of an aliases, names Tim had explained belonged to aunts or were a mix of her middle or mothers name, combined with her maiden name. It wasn’t clear yet why Lucy, and possibly the younger Tim, had survived the attack which killed everybody else, including her youngest son. But, Raylan said, Tim wasn’t racing to find that part out.

Rachel pulled into the parking lot at the Sheriff’s station and sat for a moment, debating walked over the road to a diner and caffeinating before she headed inside. She dialled her phone, tried Raylan first, listened to it ring.

In their earlier call Raylan had told her they were heading to check out a lead but would be back by the time she arrived in Anderson. The ringtone cut off and a robotic voice asked her to leave a message. Rachel sighed, got out of her car, tried Tim as she crossed the lot.

There was nothing, no answer at all and it was starting to tick her off but more than that it was worrying her. Raylan she could expect to ignore her calls a while but even if Tim couldn’t call he would find some way to get in contact. He’d once half joked that if he had no other way to signal to her, he’d set shit on fire if he thought she might see it.

The night was cool and getting cooler and Rachel shivered a little as the air hit her skin. The double doors to the lobby parted smoothly and Rachel smiled at a bored female deputy who looked up hopefully, spotted her badge as Rachel drew back her coat to show it. “Rachel Brookes,” she showed her ID too and the Deputy smiled. “I’m here to see Deluna and the Marshals?”

“You here with that those others?” she asked, “that tall one?” she smiled in a specific way and Rachel had to laugh. Raylan did that to people.

Rachel half smiled. “Yeah, lucky me,” she said and the Deputy chuckled.

“They left a while back now,” the Deputy said. “You want me to sign you in?”

“They’re not back yet?” Rachel asked. The lobby had AC and was colder than outside and she shivered. There was something about the lobby that was colder than the air and Rachel craved a familiar face. “

“Not quite,” the Deputy smiled and handed Rachel a badge to indicate she was a verified visitor. “They let on to you where they were headed?”

“A bar name of Bullocks?” Rachel asked. “They said they’d be back,” she checked her watch. “A couple hours ago,” she smiled at the Deputy but there was that worry again, gnawing at her insides. Raylan and Tim were two of the most capable people she’d ever encountered but they had an uncanny knack for finding trouble.

The young woman thought a while, checked the log to see what time Deluna, Raylan and Tim had left. “Can’t be too long now,” she said. “Folks get lost up there even with GPS but they’ll make it back, you just look for the only lights around for miles!” she smiled again and it was kind, reassuring, sympathetic. “You want me to sign you in here or you want to get situated first? You over at the motel?”

Rachel was silent a moment. The sky beyond the door was deep dark and the gnawing worry was getting worse, amplified somehow by how open and empty the Sheriff’s station felt. She wanted to see her friends.

Where the hell were they?


	18. Chapter 18

Raylan breathed slowly, tried to calm the thudding in his chest, calm his breathing. He felt like a chime was ringing inside his head only instead of making a high tone it resonated with pain, an agony that crept through every part of his body. He had been hit in the head, he had been kicked in the ribs one of the times he had awoken on what felt like a long drive. He was in pain and he was in the dark and he was starting to panic.

He flexed his wrists, felt cuffs closed too tight around them, biting into the skin a little, rolled his ankles to find he was barefoot, but his legs worked. He took a breath, sat himself up, the pain exploding behind his eyes and radiating in waves through his neck and shoulders. Someone had hit him the right kind of way, so his neck seized up, the muscles tightened and locked and any movement felt like it would snap something important. His stomach flooded with nausea but he breathed slow and deep, fought it. With everything else he didn’t want to get trapped in a locked room with a puddle of his own vomit.

Raylan held still for a while, let himself adjust to being upright, let the pain settle and the nausea still. He glanced around the room, trying to use just his eyes, spotted a faint line of light he had to figure was the gap under a door. He listened, concentrated past that strange, imaginary pained ringing and he heard TV voices and canned laughed, real human voices, real human laughter. He heard the thumps of someone moving around, heard more human talking.

“Raylan,” He heard a voice and he jumped out of his god damn skin.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whisper hissed. “Tim?”

Raylan glanced around again, his eyes slowly adjusting to the deep dark and spotted vague shapes, a figure that could be a person. “No, it’s God,” Tim drawled in a low whisper and Raylan heard faint rustles as Tim moved. “Turns out I was in this dank ass room this entire time.”

Raylan actually laughed, a quiet chuff of breath, aware they weren’t alone in the building. Tim’s tone was a whispered version of his normal drawl but there was a thread of fear in there . “Deluna in here?”

“If he is, he’s dead,” Tim spoke bluntly. His voice was quiet, low down near the floor like he was laid on his back.

Raylan was silent, as if listening to the emptiness of the room would determine if there was a third body in it. Deluna could be dead. Shit.

“You worked out a plan to save the day yet?” He asked lightly of his younger friend. “Or you been nappin’ down there?” he teased.

“I had to lay down. Room kept spinning after they blew that shit in my face. I saw some cool new colours though,” Tim drawled lightly but that tension, that fear was gone now.

“What was that he gave you?” Raylan vaguely recalled a scene on the road; The three of them kneeling in the headlights of Deluna’s car, the bikers, drunk and high, walking around them like they were appraising animals for sale. One had lunged forwards, grabbed Tim and clamped their hand over his mouth.

“Coke and somethin’ else made me see kinda…weird shit, I think,” Tim said. He’d been made to inhale something in the bikers hand, white powder that had coated his mouth and nose when the biker let him lose and he fell forwards, pupils so blown his eyes had looked black and he had gone very still, stared at nothing like it was staring back. The biker had laughed like it was funny.

Raylan was quiet, listening again to what sounded like movement in the building. Tim had gone silent too and they paused, listened to the footsteps and then the creaking pipes as a toilet was flushed. The steps retreated towards the TV sounds, clearer now Raylan was listening for it. “That first question I asked?” Raylan said quietly.

It was Tim’s turn to pause. “I saw four at the road and three had shotguns and the other didn’t draw at all. All a good size, all high as fuck and drunker still so can use that but right now we’re bound and captive and unarmed.”

“They say much?” Raylan asked.

“What I recall, largely racial epithets, anti government sentiments, the usual. I don’t get the feelin’ they’re specifically pissed off with us. I got no idea why they’re doin’ it.” Tim told him.

“So no,” Raylan said, “no plan?”

“I got a plan. It involves killin’ everyone and leavin’,” Tim explained calmly. “You in?”

“Damn straight,” Raylan agreed.

 As if they had timed it, the thumping feet came back, towards the door and it was swung inwards abruptly, a light flaring on as someone hit a switch.

Ralan blinked in the sudden sharp light, glanced around at the room which was little more than a box, four walls and a roof, windows boarded over and covered.

Raylan saw Tim quickly sitting up, eyes fixed on the figure in the doorway. The younger man was a little pale, a little marked up and bruised, fatigue lit through his eyes, but he was angry, glaring.

They turned to the man in the doorway, tall and muscular with proudly displayed white power tattoos and a jarhead buzz cut. The guy looked drunk and high and angry and dumb. He grinned.

 “Howdy y’all!”


	19. Chapter 19

Rachel was tired. She had briefly checked in at her motel and with her badge and some good Texan charm she had got let in to the boys room to see if they might have come back and gone back to bed. The room was a study in characters, Raylan’s side controlled chaos, unmade bed, his overnight bag open on top of the blankets where he must have gone digging for new clothes.

On Tim’s side he was neat as a damn pin, bed made with military corners, a single overnight bag neatly laid across the smoothed down cloth and zipped closed, awaiting the owners return. Rachel glanced at some papers on the small side table but nothing was relevant to her case. She called both their phones again, then again for good measure but both rang out and went to voicemail. That was something. It meant the phones were still on and intact. If that changed her worry would stop being just that. It might become something she had to deal with.

She sighed, glanced around the room again and wished the boys were around, were there being goof offs and nerds. She sat down, pulled the folded sheets of paper from her pocket and examined them, sighed deeply, wondering how in the hell she would talk about the content of her small wad of papers, when her phone rang in her hand, shrill and sudden. She saw a half familiar number as she answered, heard a half familiar voice.

“Marshal? It’s Deputy Campbell from the Sheriff’s office?” she recognised the voice of the young deputy manning the desk at the station.

“Yes?” Rachel asked, abruptly putting her papers away, like the other woman might detect their content over the phone. “Are they back?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” Campbell said apologetically. “No they’re not…but something happened. You should come back over. It’s Deluna…they found Deluna.”


	20. Chapter 20

Raylan was in pain, real pain that was making focus hard, made him dizzy with every breath he took. The bikers had been imbibing for hours, drugs and booze and casual violence, in the kind of quantities that sent rock stars to the hospital but for these men meant a party. And that was what it was, Raylan had realised with dawning fear as the night or the day dragged on.

It was a party.

These men didn’t have an ideology or a plan, this wasn’t long built up revenge for some act against them. They were lit and thought they lived above the law and they’d seen badges and decided to mess with the owners. To Raylan nothing could be scarier than bored maniacs.

 When they had first entered the room there had been some bloviating from the jarhead, a psychopath named Vic, about the Marshals coming through their ‘territory’, about the grievous offence that caused. He had talked about the need to rectify the problem by making sure no Marshals made the same mistake again.

He had been trying to scare them, or perhaps trying to justify what he wanted to do next, but it had been filler, a precursor while they psyched themselves up to start beating on their captives.

Tim had met Raylan’s eye and given just a tiny shake of his head, warning not to respond or speak, not to give them an excuse. It hadn’t mattered. After a few minutes of Vic drunkenly ranting, Raylan had accidentally caught the eye of a red haired Viking who had been referred to as Jed and the big thug had thrown the first punch, knocking Raylan off his knees and down to the ground. Raylan had been dazed, had seen Tim try and get up but the other biker had turned and smacked him back down.

Raylan had lost count of how many rounds of this there had been, Vic high and drunk, warbling on about the Marshals mistake, curses and taunts punctuated by sudden but mercifully brief bursts of violence. The bikers had come and gone a couple of times, for a few minutes here or there, refreshing their beers, pausing to go to the bathroom. Which, Raylan’s dull, exhausted brain mused, was something. This might be the third time they had come back.

“I thought you was badasses?!” Jed, who was tall and muscular had red hair and a red beard, both worn long and braided. “Huh?” he punctuated his question by slamming a boot into Raylan’s ribs again and Raylan felt his gorge rise, felt himself lose the fight not to be sick.

He’d lost his sense of time, lost count of how many times they’d each been hit, kicked, thrown around. Jed watched him vomit, kicked him again as soon as he was done and Raylan hoped he might pass out soon. In a detached way he lamented the fact he’d finally thrown up, after wanting so much not to. In an even more detached way he wondered if that was shock talking.

“Huh? I said aren’t you meant to be some badass?” Jed sneered at him, stepped back in and hauled him up, struck him hard across the face and slammed him into the wall. Raylan fell to the ground and stayed there, lay groaning. That same detached voice cracked a bad joke about feeling like a kid again, on the wrong side of Arlo. He squinted at the dirty wood panelled wall, waited to feel like he was functional again. He heard liquid splashing, smelled Jed’s beer as the bottle was tipped over him, closed his eyes so it didn’t run into them.

Jed reached down and grabbed for him again and Raylan cursed, wished he had just a second or two to get his breath back. As soon as he could he would mount a defence. Eventually. Maybe later, after he slept for an hour or two.

“Hey fuck nut,” Tim’s voice called in his low drawl. “Save me one of those beers.”

“Fuck you talkin’ to?” Jed snarled and turned on Tim, Raylan twisting to see what was happening, trying to catch Tim’s eye, signal to him to shut up, to stop.

Tim was standing near the opposite wall, the other man the jarhead Vic standing nearby while he watched Jed. Vic turned to watch Tim, looked almost amused he’d spoken up. Tim looked as bad as Raylan felt, face bloodied and bruised like Raylan’s knew his own was.

“You. You deaf or are you just that stupid?” Tim snarled at Jed.

“You tryna get killed?” Jed warned.

“Oh, by you?” Tim asked forcing a dry laugh, incredulous, mocking the threat.

“Tim,” Raylan hissed at him but it didn’t matter.

Jed started forwards but Vic, the one with the jarhead cut stepped in and slammed a fist into Tim’s gut, casually crashed a hand across his jaw and sent Tim tumbling to his knees wheezing and gagging. He hunched forwards and a silvery chain worked out from under his collar, his dog tags dangling from around his neck.

“You got a fuckin’ mouth,” Vic remarked casually, crouching and reaching for the tags with curious look on his face. “Your daddy never learn you not to run it?”

“He tried,” Tim rasped around his world of pain. Tim jerked away from him, yanked the tags out of Vic’s reaching fingers, glared up at the biker with a look that Raylan thought could start a fire. Raylan wanted to yell at Tim to quit, to keep his god damned head down but there wouldn’t be much point. The boy was on some kind of mission.

Vic’s head tipped slightly. His left hand moved in a blur, closed around Tim’s throat and forced him upright, squeezing so hard Tim’s face quickly turned read. His right reached out and snatched the tags, yanking so the chain snapped around Tim’s neck and came off in Vic’s hands. Vic glared, squeezed, but let Tim go, let him slump.

He examined them, squinted at the stamped lettering. “Your ID says you was a Ranger…little faggot ass like you,” Vic drawled in a Texan twang so strong Raylan could almost believe it was faked.

“Take these off,” Tim raised his cuffed wrists, “I’ll show you,” Tim croaked.

Vic chuckled, ignored him, turned the tags over again while Tim watched. He eyed the chain dangling from Vic’s hands. “I’ll need those back,” he said, his voice a hoarse rasp.

 Vic curled his lip, pissed off at the show of bravado and he shoved the tags in a pocket. He crouched, grabbed Tim’s jaw and glared into those defiant eyes. “You saw service, right? You went over, killed some of them savages? Or'd your pretty little ass just cruise for desert dick?”

Tim glared into his eyes, fell silent now. Vic watched him. “You ever get caught?” he asked, almost gently. “Hey...you ever get waterboarded?”

Tim’s utter lack of a reaction spoke more volumes than any show of fear he might exhibit. “Oh,” Vic laughed as he figured out the same thing Raylan had.  “Okay, hey, Jed? Get me a washcloth and a water jug,” Vic called and Raylan saw Tim start to lock down as if preparing for the worst, eyes hardening, expression closing off. “I done it before but never on a real soldier,” Vic turned back to Tim. “Always wanted to try it on a real soldier though.”

Jed laughed, slipped out of the room while Vic grabbed Tim’s throat again, squeezing hard as if to subdue him by that alone. Raylan rolled to his knees, was nearly on his feet when Vic let Tim go and Tim slumped forwards again gasping,

Raylan was half up on his knees, prone and defenceless when Vic stepped forwards and kicked him hard in the crotch and Raylan’s world exploded. He folded over, collapsed in a heap of useless pain, certain he was about to be sick again, body wracked with waves of agony.

 It was fucking cheap and dirty and the easiest way to render him utterly useless. Vic booted him again, crashing his heel into Raylan’s kidney. The pain forced all the air out of his body and Raylan collapsed, gasping, every nerve on fire, every muscle cramping.

He could barely breathe, barely think but an alarm was shrieking inside his head, a warning Tim was in real trouble. He tried to turn, forced his eyes open and saw he had missed more than he realised, had lost time somewhere. Vic was straddling Tim, sitting on his arms to hold them down. Jed was kneeling at Tim’s head, pulling his chin back like he was about to do CPR, and holding the wash cloth taut over his face while Vic tipped the jug of water over it.

To Tim it would feel like he was drowning.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for some gross racist language which do not reflect the views of the author. I apologise sincerely for any offence caused.

The last address in Deluna’s GPS was a dingy and run down biker bar that served as a central social hub for a small collection of mobile homes and houses so run down Rachel felt the word ‘shack’ was the only suitable description, though she didn’t feel very good about it.  Bullocks had once been a single small cube but over time someone had added double wides on the back and front sides to add space, and out the back a beer garden of sorts had sprung up.

It was early evening so the place was quiet as Rachel and Sheriff Williams of Anderson rolled up in the mans squad car and examined the frontage of the bar. There were a few parked up motorbikes bearing less than subtle white power insignia, and an emblem Williams explained belonged to the Tombstones.

“Staties say until a month ago, this was just the local waterin’ hole,” Williams was telling her as they began to check their weapons in case the situation turned on them. “But they started gettin’ some calls about a half dozen or so younger Tombstone guys who had been frequenting the place, gettin’ high and drunk and pickin’ fights with locals or wreckin’ the place. Owner, this former biker guy I guess is your suspect, he refuses to outright ban them. He just calls to get them moved along if they get rowdy,” he explained quickly.

Deluna was dead. He had been found face down in the back of his own vehicle two hours away from Bullocks. He had no visible injuries bar some light bruising on his face, nothing that would have killed him and an ME had speculated he might even have died of natural causes. But his car was damaged with evidence it had been forced off the road. And more to the point, Raylan and Tim were absent. Their presence was all over the car, the passenger seat pushed back to compensate for Raylan’s long legs, a book on the back seat that either belonged to a teenaged boy, or of course, Tim.  Besides which, their last known location was in Deluna’s god damned company, and now they were not any more. They were missing. It was official now. An APB had gone out, calls for back up that specifically described her boys as missing, maybe injured, definitely in danger.

Rachel had allowed herself a few minutes to quietly freak out, calling Art to relay the situation and let him talk her back down, but very quickly Sheriff Williams had called her over, told her they were heading straight for Bullocks bar. Once Williams had learned the full details of Deluna’s case, he had known where to go, before he even checked the GPS. Once he saw the data on the small screen, he was certain.

“Deluna told my friends that this bar was clean, had no affiliation,” Rachel pointed out as Williams quietly made a radio call to a State Trooper squad car parked some ways behind them.

“That’s not wrong, not really. These bikers been hangin’ out are supposedly passin’ through, wouldn’t have been here long enough for anyone to decide the place became affiliated with anybody. But…far as I’m concerned, right now we’re considerin’ them hostile and this owner asshole…he’s our target. We’re bringin’ him in, in cuffs, suspect in Deluna’s case and of takin’ your friends,” Williams told her. “Ma’am, you have my word I’ll do what I can to bring them home.”

Rachel looked at him, weighed him up. On the drive over he’d talked at length, almost eagerly, about his efforts to clean up the local police force, to challenge the issues and corruption. For all Rachel had heard about Anderson still being a suspect place, Williams appeared sincere. Besides, she didn't have much choice but to trust him. He opened his door and motioned for Rachel to follow, nodding to another squad car parked a ways back, not out in the open but still visible, a presence they wanted people to notice, though not yet feel threatened by.

Two State troopers opened their doors, stood by their car but they didn’t advance yet.

“So much for southern politeness,” Rachel joked as Williams checked his gun again.

“Oh normally I’m a stickler for manners but if these assholes are jumped up and high and think they can lay hands on law men…” Williams shrugged and Rachel nodded.

She took a breath, found a centre of calm as she followed the older man, running calmly through their suspicions; Rayan, Tim and Deluna may have accidentally walked into the firing line of a gang of hopped up psychos out to screw with people and that was likely it. Wrong time, wrong place. It explained how or why they might have gone missing. It didn’t fill her with much hope for bringing them back alive though. If there was a real motive, a chance to bargain or reason, they had hope. If a bunch of guys were out to have some fun it would be easier to kill and dispose of any hostages.

Rachel pushed the thought away, found that centre of calm, reminded herself Tim had been a Ranger and Raylan had grown up in Harlan, developed his own profound skills for violence. It helped her, the idea the boys would save themselves long before they needed a rescue.

Williams stalked across the parking lot, entered the bar through the old fashioned saloon doors like he owned the place, like he was living a Western. “I need the owner,” Williams started to say but a gunshot rang out and the wood of the door frame beside his head exploded in a burst of wood splinters, Williams reeling away to protect his eyes.

Rachel was a few steps behind and grabbed the back of Williams jacket and lurched back out through the door, drawing her own weapon even as she shoved Williams over to the relative cover of the wall. “US Marshals, lay down your gun or I’ll shoot,” Rachel was shouting as she raised her gun and pressed flat against the wall.

The reply was more gunfire, but Rachel ducked low, leaned around the wall through the spacious gap beneath the doors and spotted a gunman, fired and saw the man spin and fall down.

Someone else fired on her and Rachel ducked back, saw Williams trying to draw a bead but having to withdraw from the barrage of fire like she had. “You got a plan?” he asked her urgently.

“Keep them busy,” she warned. “We need at least one of them alive to ask where my damn Marshals are.”

Williams looked at her, surprised by her casual coldness but she ignored him, turned and hurried away. She followed the wall of the bar, stayed low and moved carefully, aware of the other Deputies Williams was calling on to advance, cover Rachel and Williams both. She crept around the side, staying low, darting up to peer through the windows as another burst of gunfire rattle the glass and she heard a booming retort from Williams. She’d seen the hand cannon in his holster, felt her hearing threaten to give up under the sound of hellfire.

She saw what she had suspected there was, the back entrance to the beer garden area, hurried around the side and back of the bar, vaulted the low rope fence that demarked the garden outside. She weaved between cheap plastic picnic tables, waved one or two confused drinkers down, watched as they lay on their bellies, eyeing her carefully. They spotted her badge and looked away, seemed to decide not to mess with her.

She approached the back, glanced inside to see four bikers huddled behind overturned tables, the ground beneath them littered with broken bottles and glasses, evidence of their partying. She saw one biker wheel around as one of Williams bullets took him high in the chest, saw the other three duck back in surprise, saw their drunken lopsided grins, signs they were not thinking terribly clearly about their actions.

Rachel fired a bullet two inches into a wall beside one bikers head and when he turned she spoke, voice carrying loud and clear,” US MARSHALS SERVICE. LAY DOWN YOUR GUNS OR WE KILL ALL OF YOU.”

“FUCK YOU, NIGGER BITCH,” one biker yelled back and Rachel darted back for cover as gunfire exploded over her head.

She ignored the racial slur, for now, ducked low back around the door frame and shot out the guys ankles from under him. He squealed like a stuck pig and Rachel was more than a little satisfied with the sound, saw the two remaining men look at each other, turn on her and start to unload. One of them bucked forwards as he was shot from behind, his turn exposing his shoulder to Williams, and as the other turned to see what had happened, his big drunken face falling to a slack jawed expression of surprise, Rachel started forwards like a runner off the block, reaching for a small, satisfyingly heavy shape in her back pocket.

With a flick of her wrist her Asp, a flexible extendable baton she favoured, extended from her hand with a satisfying ‘snickt’ sound that Tim had once told her reminded him of the comic book character ‘Wolverine’.

The biker looked up in surprise at the compact moving figure that advanced on him so quickly, looked more surprised when she shattered his hands with her baton, knocked his gun clear, brought it down on his upper arm and upper thigh in hits designed to shock and briefly paralyse the muscles.

He squealed in agony, slumped uselessly to the ground with Rachel standing over him and Rachel turned, quickly kicked the weapons away from the other bikes. Williams and the staties advanced into the bar, taking in the sight of Rachel, her gun and baton, the whimpering, agonised bikers.

Williams looked impressed, “Kentucky ain’t fuckin’ around,” he noted, grinned. “Nice work.”

Rachel ignored him, stepped in to the biker and grabbed the front of his shirt. “You’re gonna answer some questions, or I’m gonna show you how good with this I am,” she weighed her baton in her hand, watched the bikers eyes lock on to it, his gaze already clouded with pain.

He swallowed, licked his lips. “Fuck you, coon.” He challenged.

Rachel stepped on his hand, the one she’d already half broken with her baton, the one laying useless on the ground, quickly turning red and purple. “Pardon?” she asked lightly, flexing her foot.

“Bitch!” the biker yelped. “You gon’ let this bitch abuse your prisoners?” he snapped at Williams.

“Boy, I’ll let her flay you alive if she wants,” Williams said cheerily. “I’d suggest you watch your fuckin’ mouth.”

“I want my lawyer!” The biker quavered.

“You hear that?” Rachel asked Williams and the two younger cops pointedly.

“Ma’am, my ears are ringin’ like church bells,” one of the deputies grinned wide at her, his partner who reminded Rachel of an older, huskier Tim shrugging along just as cluelessly.

“You want us all to go secure your perimeter, ma’am?” he asked brightly, ignoring the biker.

“Go find me the owner,” Williams told them and the cops turned, headed off.

Rachel looked back at her biker with a small smile. “You ready to be friendly?” she asked.

The biker looked around, took real stock of his situation, something like sobriety etching through the haze and reminding him he was in trouble. The cops were not on his side and his biker friends were laid out and injured, useless. There was a look of resentful defeat bleeding across his features and he slumped, any posturing, any attempt at saving face long gone.

Rachel smiled at him again. “That’s more like it.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major trigger warnings for threatened sexual violence, rape, non-con and graphic violence. Very intense, dark scene. Please be aware.

Against all his best instincts, in the face of basic common sense and a slave to exhaustion, Raylan had fallen asleep. Or maybe he had passed out. Either way, his eyes had closed and stayed that way and he fell into something dark and more comfortable than reality was right now. He didn’t dream. He was grateful for that.

They had been alone for hours after the men left, the TV blaring constantly somewhere in the house, the mens voices rising and falling again, their heavy, drunken footsteps as they moved around.

There had been long and terrifying period after they left when Tim had coughed and wheezed like he really was drowning, his breath coming in long, rattling whoops that had to be burning inside his chest. Raylan had been uncertain if it was a physiological reaction to the water or a psychological one but it had taken a long time to stop, even with Raylan speaking up, calmly reminding Tim to breathe in, to try and focus.

 Eventually Tim’s breathing had slowed and the coughing fits had petered off to nothing, though when he breathed it was a hoarse rattle that sounded painful. Raylan had asked Tim to speak, give some indication he was there, was okay, functional, cogent, present. Tim had said nothing and Raylan had given up trying to make him. He was too tired, too hurt on his own. Besides, he didn’t blame Tim if the man wasn’t in the mood to talk.

Soon after, when Tim’s breathing had become more slow and rhythmic, Raylan must have dropped off too. He was awake now and something had made that happen. He lay in the dark and listened. It had been the door opening slowly and quietly like someone was trying to be sneaky and quiet. Not the same brash entrance from before. This was more insidious.

Raylan opened his eyes, saw a silhouetted figure enter from the corridor, saw the door swing shut behind them. It had been Vic, he was sure, had recognised the shape made by the jarhead cut, the muscular frame. The room was plunged once again into darkness and no one moved and Raylan wondered briefly if Tim was awake, realised with a start he couldn’t hear any wheezing, any coughing. He heard movement, Vic crossing the room, heard a noise as something was pulled away from the window and a tiny glimmer of light found its way inside and lit up a square of light in the middle of the room.

Vic was lit up in the glow, looked around at the dimly lit pair, swigged his beer. Raylan glanced at Tim, saw the younger man was alive and awake, had managed to roll to a crouch, that soldier instinct always driving and pushing him to fight if the chance came. He watched Vic like a cat watches a mouse. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

Vic was staring at him, glaring, challenging him, but Tim waited, watched. Vic sipped his beer again and with his free hand he rubbed the front of his jeans. Raylan’s stomach dropped. The atmosphere of the room changed completely. Raylan felt his head shake ‘no’, felt the fear began to grow. This wasn’t going to happen. This couldn’t happen.

“I never fucked no Ranger before,” Vic drawled and Raylan saw Tim’s frown deepen, felt his own gut drop as Vic stepped closer. “I had a Marine. Had a pilot once. But special forces like a Ranger. I never fucked one of you,” he drawled again, rubbing his jeans slowly, carefully. Raylan felt adrenaline flood through him, saw Tim's hands curl into fists as they both prepared to fight. 

 “You’d be a hoot I reckon. All that trainin’, actin bold like you is... you’d fight like god damned animal,” he chuckled, excited by the idea, visibly so, squeezing himself through his jeans at the very thought. “You’d be a hell of a man to break,” he said, softy and quietly and Raylan saw real fear flutter across Tim’s features before they hardened again, settled into an angry, defiant glare. “But…” Vic tilted his head and without warning his leg lashed out, struck at Tim hard.

 Tim was knocked down half out of the small pool of light, only his legs remaining visible and Vic lunged in, a shadow in the half light, stomping once, twice, three times on the prone figure on the ground. Tim's legs pulled up and in as he curled up, tried to be small, tried to protect his body. Vic swooped in and punched, his arm another shape in the half light, moving up and down. Vic stood, stomped again. Tim grunted with pain, cried out as the last kick landed, a sharp, almost surprised sound. Raylan thought he heard a crack.

Tim lay groaning, dazedly cursing and wheezing for breath, curling around his torso, his pain, lost to it, oblivious to the world around him. “Despite that god damned pretty mouth,” Vic leaned in, grabbed Tim and hauled him up, “god damn, that mouth…” Vic almost purred and Raylan tried to get up, tried to get to his feet, ready to commit murder. “You’re not my type,” Vic said to Tim.

Vic saw Raylan rising, tossed Tim to the ground and crossed the room in two steps. He smashed the bottle across the side of Raylan’s head and Raylan’s world tipped upside down as beer and broken glass burst around his face and head. He felt Vic’s hands in his hair, dragging him to his knees, felt the cold metallic touch of a gun barrel against his temple.

He fought desperately against a rising panic as Vic’s hand tightened in his hair, dragged his head back. His head spun, he was sure he was bleeding from somewhere under his hair. The dizziness and the stink of the beer coating him made him want to puke.

 “Suck my cock.” Vic’s voice came in a low, throaty rumble, giving away his arousal, his need. Every nerve in Raylan’s body jolted and he acutely understood the expression ‘his blood ran cold’. He felt a tremble of fear actually run through his body. This was not happening. But it was.

“Fuck you,” Raylan spat, trying to pull away, a ball of anger and fear rolling in his stomach and chest, pushing him to get away from Vic, the feel of the gun against his skull. Rage and fear mashed together. This was not happening. But his arms felt like lead weights and he knew if he moved too much he was going to retch and be more helpless than he already was. This was not happening.

But it was.

“I intend to, in time,” Vic said and Raylan could hear him smile, hated him. Vic hit him again, the butt of the gun cracking against the same place as the bottle had and the pain was incredible, turned Raylan’s whole world white for a second. Vic was talking but Raylan missed it until Vic yanked his hair again, bringing him back to reality. “I’ll ask nice one more time,” Vic said. “Suck my cock.”

“You better be ready to kill me,” Raylan said raggedly, teeth clenched, meaning every word.

Vic cracked the gun across the bridge of Raylan’s nose and Raylan fell forwards, pain exploding outwards, hands rising to his face as his eyes filled with pained tears, his vision briefly ruined. He would have fallen further, would have happily stayed hunched over in a private, quiet place until the pain passed but Vic dragged him back up by his hair, set him on his knees. “Play nice, or I beat your Ranger to death in front of you.”

Raylan froze, heard Tim groan in pain, unsure Tim was even aware what was happening nearby.

“Suck,” Vic started to say, grinding the barrel of the gun hard into Raylan’s temple, “my co-”

A shadow moved behind him, something dropping over his head and looping around his neck and Raylan felt a fire light inside him, let instinct take over and swiping his hands across, knocking the gun away from his temple and shoving Vic away, getting his hands around the gun, snatching it from Vic’s hands.

 He shoved himself backwards, felt his back hit the wall as Vic was dragged back, reaching uselessly for his throat as he stumbled backwards. Raylan saw Tim, a blur of pale skin and shadows wrapped around Vic, hauling him back into the darkness, into the part the light didn’t reach yet, until Vid had totally vanished.

There was a faint thud as Vic fell and Raylan stared into the nothing, into the spot where Vic had been, heard the faint thumping of Vic’s struggles, small and useless gagging and choking sounds as Vic’s life was strangled out of him. Vic made one long, ominous gurgling sound.

Raylan stared into the darkness and thought of what had been about to happen, what Vic had been trying to do. He wondered if Tim would go to prison for strangling Vic to death, realised that all he had to do was stay silent. Raylan had shot people before, he'd killed them and never thought twice about the morality of it. Tim had killed dozens more. There was little to no reason to save Vic.

But he wouldn't be saving Vic.

 “Don’t kill him,” Raylan heard himself say.

The silence intensified, like some kind of void had opened up that made it deeper, thicker. There was movement in the shadows and Raylan thought he saw a pair of predatory eyes catch a glimmer of the light. He wondered again if he was dreaming. His head hurt like a bell was ringing inside his skull but as he thought it he realised it might be fading. He wondered if he was concussed.

Was it Vic or Tim moving in the shadows? The thought occurred quickly and brought with it a near blind panic that had just about gotten going when Tim walked out of the darkness and Raylan felt relief flood him. Tim said nothing, had found the keys for the cuffs on Vic and was unlocking his.

“Tim,” Raylan started in a whisper but the other man froze, quickly raising one newly released hand, one finger to his mouth in the universal ‘shh’ gesture as his eyes widened. They both heard the stomping, heavy feet walking towards them, directly towards their door. Tim crossed and passed Raylan the keys and his unlocked cuffs, turned on his heel and darted over, half crouched and flattened his body against the wall nearest to the door.

“Vic?” a voice called, unfamiliar, one of the other bikers. “Hey?”

Raylan backed out of the pool of light, quietly unlocking the first bracelet, clutched the gun but realised firing it might not be the smartest thing. They may yet have some element of surprise.

Tim glanced at him, saw the gun, saw Raylan’s questioning shrug and shook his head as if he had sensed Raylan’s own concern.

There was a pregnant silence on the other side of the door and it occurred to Raylan that the listener might have been expecting to hear some very specific sounds but pushed the thought away as soon as he had it. He glanced at Tim but Tim’s focus was hard on the door.  The door opened, swung outwards and a gun clutched in a hand entered first, ahead of their anxious owner.

Tim moved like a shadow, lighting fast, grabbing the gun and the wrist of the man wielding it in separate hands. He removed the gun in one smooth movement, dragged the guy into the room in another. Tim yanked the arm, swung the biker around and down into Tim’s rising knee. The biker folded in half with a groan that sounded almost resigned and as he slumped over Tim drove his elbow into the back of the mans neck, let him crumple to a useless heap of leathers and facial hair. It took less than a second, came barely a heartbeat after Tim neutralised Vic.

Raylan realised he’d never seen Tim handle someone like that before. He was reminded, suddenly and effectively, Tim was a profoundly dangerous person.

And now he had a gun.


	23. Chapter 23

It was very quiet inside Tim’s head as he checked the bathroom near to them was clear and then crept bare foot through the dark narrow corridor, gun held up and ready to fire.

He moved carefully, checked for other doors but the corridor was one long run, nowhere he had to check or be afraid someone would spring from. He moved slow, patient, testing the floorboards and edging around those that might make a noise, give him away. He could feel his heart beating strong and steady, could feel the adrenaline flooding his system and dulling the various pains and aches, pushing away fear and fatigue.

He couldn’t think about what had happened yet. They were not safe, the threat was not neutralised, there was no time to spare for the trauma, the bubbling terror and fear at the back of Tim’s skull. Eventually it would overwhelm him and when it did he hoped to be near copious amounts of alcohol and hoped he would retain enough presence of mind not to poison himself to death. Until that time, it was very quiet inside his head and he liked it that way. He could think better.

 He followed the ghostly blue glow of the TV and the sound of canned laughter that issued from it, followed the vacuum of silence left by the other bikers trying very hard not to make a sound, towards the den at the end of the corridor. As he got close, he hugged the wall and lowered himself down, became the smallest possible target.

He reached the edge of the room, scoped it quickly and saw a sturdy couch had it’s back to him, a sturdy cabinet was set up to break up an open plan room, both giving excellent cover to anyone on the other side. He saw a sturdy arm chair closer to him.

There was a white hot flash and the world strobed and exploded as a gunshot blasted across the room. Tim pivoted at the waist, fired calmly towards the white light. He registered a bullet fly over his head, heard his own meet biker flesh, heard a yelp of surprise and a thud as they fell to the ground. Almost at once and in the semi darkness, everyone briefly blinded by the muzzle flashes, Tim darted forwards and found the arm chair and curled his frame up behind it.

A shotgun boomed and the chair rocked and rattled and Tim rolled out from behind it and came up to one knee, fired a shot. He heard a second gun fire from behind him and saw a biker gripping a shotgun thrown backwards as both bullets found their target in the middle of his chest. Tim glanced back, saw Raylan behind him, gun raised, focus on potential targets. Tim turned back to the room.

Jed rose from behind the couch firing on Raylan and Tim turned again, used the muzzle flash again and drew a bead on the biker. Jed’s temple burst in a flash of red and in the flickering glow of the TV the man toppled like a puppet whose strings got cut and silence reigned.


	24. Chapter 24

Tim wished his orderly hadn’t left him alone.

Alone was a relative term right then since Tim was one of a half dozen people on a long stretch of hospital corridor but he still wished the guy was standing nearby. The man was big and muscular in a way reminded Tim of Charlie, had a Marine Corp. tattoo on one toned arm but Tim could forgive him that small indiscretion in the name of friendship and a personal body guard with a physique out of an MMA magazine. Tim felt like fourteen kinds of cold shit who right that second could handle himself about as well as he could handle kids, so he had felt much safer in the company of a man who looked like he could handle a drunken Buffalo.

He knew, in theory, he was safe. He was in hospital and Deputies and Staties and some Texas Marshals had rolled up to play unofficial armed guard, setting up in the waiting room and moving through the corridors. With Deluna dead and two other law men in bad shape the call had gone out. No one with ill intent was getting through the line.

He knew Rachel was back at his room, guarding Raylan, focused and watching for any and all danger. He knew if Tim came back with so much as a band aid more than he’d left with Rachel would rain down hellfire. He half wanted someone to tick her off so he got to see her unload some of the tension she’d been carrying around since her convoy of emergency vehicles had rolled up on the isolated cabin home, since she spotted Raylan and Tim sitting exhausted on the porch of the cabin where they had been held.

But that knowledge did nothing to turn off the buzzing in Tim’s head, the fear bubbling in his gut like a slowly cooking stew. What had helped him feel calm was being rolled around the hospital by a wall of a man who he was pretty confident had quietly detected his mood and had stayed in sight almost every moment since.

But now the guy was gone. He was waiting in the x-ray room for the prints of Tim’s arm, a limb the doctor was confident was broken and while he waited, Tim had to sit and wait in his wheelchair, alone trying not to feel useless and weak while the arm in question hung in a sling around his neck. In his other arm, someone had inserted every IV needle the hospital had and he was on pain medications, something else, a sedative to calm his nerves, a nurse had said with a knowing look Tim hadn’t much appreciated, like she had some insight on him he didn't understand.

The sedative didn't make him feel more sedate, but his whole world was in a slight soft focus. Everything was like the final scenes in a made for TV Christmas movie., fuzzy round the edges and a little too brightly coloured. It hadn’t actually helped his fear and anxiety, at _all,_ but everything sure looked nice.

He glanced to his left and saw a long expanse of empty corridor and hated the feeling like he needed to rub his eyes to get them to focus,  glanced right and saw another group likely waiting for X-Rays, two college aged kids and a small family group.

The college kids nursed a few different injuries each but one had the lower half of his leg wrapped in a splint and kept muttering to his friend, who could barely speak and would just giggle. Drunk or high, they had been in some trouble.

The family, two parents, an older son and the grandma he kept coming back to for attention, were crowded around a very cute little girl with her own arm in a cast, fussing over her to keep her smiling. Tim wasn’t sure of the hour, knew it was somewhere after midnight and before dawn so the drawn, tired expression on her face, what appeared to be her visual boredom with her parents iPad made a lot of sense.

She was curious, looking around and she glanced over, caught Tim’s eye. He gave her a small smile, raised his good hand to wave but her little eyes widened and she looked quickly back to her tablet, glancing at him like she was afraid.

Tim looked away just as quickly. He looked around, saw a shaded window, a reflective surface, used his perfectly functional feet to pull his wheelchair towards it a little and get a look at himself.

‘Oh,” he muttered to himself. Her reaction made a lot of sense. Tim had a black eye so dark that in the reflection it was a pool of black like the eye was gone altogether and his neck was dark, nearly black with the heavy bruising. A lip was bust open and scabbed up and one cheek was coated in a thick, padded gauze to close a wound that had opened on his cheek when Vic was pummelling him senseless.

_Tim was on the ground trying to be small but Vic kept hitting, grunting as each blow struck home and Tim hated the small, pained sounds he made in his throat, hated how he could barely raise his arms to protect himself, couldn’t find the strength to fight back or even crawl away. He was going to die, he knew it. He felt a burst of hot pain explode on his cheek, his hands coming up on their own, Vic’s steel toed boot crashed down on his arm and his world caught on fire._

“You ever wonder why they keep hospitals so cold?” Raylan’s voice came from behind him. yanked him back to the present and Tim looked up, saw Raylan’s reflection in the surface, felt his wheelchair start to move as Raylan pulled him back towards the seats near the x-ray door.

“Is it to limit the spread of germs?” Tim asked him, started to turn to see him, realised quickly it was a painful mistake and held still while he was pulled back. “Where’s your ride?”

“Oh I have far too much dignity and pride to get wheeled around in a chair. Insurance be damned,” Raylan teased and Tim raised his good hand, flipped the bird to the older man behind him.

Raylan rolled the wheel chair backwards, beside the row of seats and settled into the one closest to Tim and Tim slowly turned to face him. But he coughed suddenly, wheezed as it wracked his whole body. He felt Raylan’s hand on his back, was vaguely aware of a comforting tone reminding him to breathe. It had happened in the dark, too, Raylan calling out, telling him to breathe.

 He wanted it gone, all of it, the hand, the offered comfort. He sat back up, hoping it wasn’t obvious he was shrugging Raylan’s hand off, caught his breath and regained control, hated that he had been so weakened. It had been happening all night and would go on a while yet. Tim had inhaled small amounts of water despite himself and his body was trying to repair its self.

“Sorry,” he croaked, ignored the advice he shouldn’t talk too much to save his throat.

 Raylan shook his head, dismissed it. Tim looked him over, took in Raylan’s swollen and bruised face, the clipped patch of hair down behind Raylan’s ear, where a nurse had cut away the hair so they could put stitches into a wound on Raylan’s scalp. He reached out, gently poked Raylan's jaw to turn his head and get a better look. The wound had been jagged, the broken bottle Raylan had been hit with busting the skin open, but it had come back together real well. “Nice job,” Tim said of the stitches, “real neat.You won't even have a scar in a couple months.”

“I was pretty impressed. Didn’t feel them either. He looked even younger’n you, the doctor,” Raylan said, affecting his normal drawl laced with that faint note of sarcasm, gently slapping away Tim's hand. “Kinda wish he hadn’t cut the hair with a butter knife though. Now I gotta grow this shit out,” he brushed the bristles framing the stitches, shook his head, settled back in his chair. “How is it?” he motioned to Tim’s splinted arm. “Broken or you just fakin’ out?”

“I’m fakin’,” Tim said. “Don’t tell Rachel though, she said she’ll write all my reports for me,” he joked.

“Doesn't she anyway? Your handwritin’ is a god damn embarrassment,” Raylan said with a smile.They shared a quiet laugh, the family from down the way glancing over at the two bruised, beaten men uncertainly.

“You doin’ okay?” Tim asked as he glanced side long at the family, fought an urge to challenge the father who was glowering at them a little. It would be pointless and reckless but Tim had to work hard not to snap something at the man.

“My head hurts,” Raylan said and Tim turned back to him. He stared at him calmly, waited. Raylan shifted in his seat, touched his newly shaved hair, winced when his fingers met the stitched up wound. He dropped his hand again, sighed as if he’d remembered that Tim basically had a Masters degree in ‘waiting patiently’. “Honestly, I got hit in the head enough, I don’t have a real clear memory of events. I like it that way. Don’t intend to explore it.” he lied.

“You’re gonna talk to someone eventually though?” Tim said. “Like…a professional. Shit got...that was bad in there, Raylan. You should talk to someone.”

Raylan spoke quietly,“Yeah." he said. "I will."

Tim squinted at him but Raylan looked up, stared back, a fraternal challenge. Tim nodded, looked away. “Alright. I’ll tell Rachel on you if you don’t.”

“Now haven’t I been through enough?” Raylan asked lightly and Tim chuckled and they both radiated relief at skipping over talking in  _any detail at all_ about just how bad it had gotten.

 “You ever get overwhelmed by how much she cares about us?” Tim asked quietly.

“Right?” Raylan said. “You think it’s because we’re poor, sad abused kids and we’re not used to bein’ loved?” he half joked, but only half.

“Yeah, I do.” Tim noted, "but I also think she just cares more than the average person," and Raylan nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

She had been a joy to behold at the cabin. Rachel was a natural leader, a Chief Deputy in Waiting and had been in her element, directing personal to secure the scene, medics to attend the wounded and dead, her own gun drawn and ready in case someone else tried to come at them. When the time had come for Raylan and Tim to travel to the hospital, she had gone with them, brought along two Deputies with shotguns to serve as an escort. 

Raylan fussed with his hair again and the silence lapsed. “What about you?” he eventually asked. “You alright?”

“Not even remotely,” Tim was said calmly, shook his head. He took a breath, “I need to drink.” He said it firmly, hoped Raylan understood the weight of his words. He meant it. The sooner he could drown himself in alcohol, the better.

Raylan said nothing and Tim tried to decide if he was being judged or not but whatever Raylan was thinking, he skipped past it. Raylan stood, reached over and passed something over to Tim, pressed it into his hand with an urgency until Tim closed his hand around it.

Raylan stepped back as the orderly came back and casually dropped the folder with Tim’s x-ray print into Tim’s lap. Raylan took off back the way he’d come, the Marine turning Tim’s wheelchair in the other direction.

“Congrats, Ranger,” the orderly told him. “your arm is broke as _shit_. Your prize is meetin’ our Ortho and gettin’ it plastered up. I hope you didn’t plan on goin’ swimming soon. Or doin’ anything requires two hands,” he chuckled, following a green strip.

Tim was just about listening but most of his focus was on the object in his hand, the cool, pooled chain and the familiar ridges of the stamped print. 

His dog tags were solid in his hand, reassuringly cool and heavier than he remembered.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update; I posted the wrong version, this is the correct one with some small changes made. I hope somehow everyone gets to see this so there's no confusion later. I'll put a note at the start of the next chapter as well to make sure you come back and check this.

_ 1985 _

_Lucy held the wheel with one hand, the joint pinched between her lips, her other holding the lighter. She drew back on it, inhaled deep and felt the first waves of the high. She liked the mellow high the weed gave her, preferred it over the buzz she got from booze, the sickening feeling that always followed her._

_It made her forget about all the god damn sand. She was so sick of the desert. She hated it out here, hated the long vast expanses of flat sand and craggy rocks._

_Sand wasn’t shit without water, just dirt, really. She wanted beaches, craved the sound of the ocean and watching the surf break on the sand. It made the her fall asleep like nothing else. Out here she stirred, couldn't easily sleep the silence getting to her._

_Carla promised it would be a few more days, then they could head back to California, wait out Luis taking the guy over the border back on their beach. But Luis had to wait for someone else from Mexico to make contact and until that happened, they had to wait in the damn motel._

_Lucy was bored, the kids were getting impatient and frustrated with so little for them to do and even Carla was starting to let her frustration show. It didn’t help that the motel pool had was out of commission. It had been a filthy mess when they arrived but on request the motel manager had dumped most of a bottle of chlorine in it. Now it stank like a chemical plant and Lucy wouldn't let the kids near it for fear it would blind them or worse._

_At least the ‘Lee’ guy was paying for everything, and he was good with the kids, made up games for them, made up silly stories they enjoyed._

_Every couple of weeks he gave her the money to drive around and find a store, buy booze and food they could cook out of their motel room. Luis had to stay behind in case his contacts called. Carla couldn't drive. Sometimes Carla came with and they brought the boys but for the most part Lucy made the runs alone._

_One day she’d driven through a small town and saw a small portable barbeque out front of a cute little house. She had knocked on the door and talked to the owner, bartered for it and talked her into selling and took it back in the trailer of the pick-up._

_Lee had called her gifted. The kids had been delighted. Burgers were every kids favourite and now she could make them some._

_She didn’t have burgers this time, but she had made a long trek to the small town up the road and got hot dogs and buns for a special treat today, stocked up on instant noodles, microwaveable stuff, cereal, chips. Things that filled them up and kept a long time, wouldn’t go rotten in the heat. Any meat she bought had to get eaten the same day._

_She was starting to feel like she was gaining weight but when they got back to Cali she could go back to eating real food and walking on the beaches again._

_She spotted the motel up ahead and smiled. She’d bought pop guns for the boys and she wanted to see them smile when she presented them with the surprise. Maybe the boys could play cowboys and Indians with the little toys._

_She pulled up at the motel and hopped out of the car, licking her fingertip and using it to temporarily douse her joint, dropping it into her top pocket as she hopped out of the truck._

_There was a noise just on the edge of her hearing, coming from the direction of their rooms but a howl of wind threw dust at her and she turned away, squinted against it getting in her eyes. She ducked back into the car, starting to reach for the groceries but the wind dropped and she heard the sound again. She turned, backed out of the cab and stood and listened._

_Lucy frowned, walked forwards a little and listened carefully._

_It was a wailing, a screaming really. It was a child shrieking in that particularly urgent way little kids have, that has nothing to do with hunger or fatigue and everything to do with pure terror._

_It was a child who direly needed help._

_Lucy’s heart raced, panic flooding her body. She sprinted towards their rooms._


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small changes were made to the chapter before this one after the first posting, you may need to re-read. Sorry. Thank you.

**3 Weeks After Texas**

Charlie Maku opened the door to Tim’s neat little bungalow and Rachel nearly cursed out loud at the sight. She had been expecting the slightly built Tim and she got the hulking Charlie smiling at her in a way that she would dream about for days. She shook her head, looked at the ground, mentally chastised herself, shifted the box she carried in one arm to give herself something to do.

“Who’s your friend, Rachel?” Charlie asked in a guarded, pointed tone and Rachel looked up, saw the mans eyes fixed on the figure she had left leaning against a wall, gone cold and cautious, the old soldier coming out like she saw often in Tim. The men were always ‘on’, their guard never really down. Tim was never caught out, never got surprised. Charlie was the same.

“That’s Raylan,” she said calmly. “And he’s had a little too much to drink. Can we come in?”

Charlie looked at her, considered it. He half turned to see over his shoulder, turned back, shrugged with one shoulder. “Sure.”

Rachel had been surprised to learn Tim actually owned a home, even more surprised the first time she visited and wound up in a quiet, isolated suburb framed by thick trees. She’d sort of expected something more modern and central. Instead, Tim had a spacious backyard he let run a little wild and unkempt and it ran away from the house, down towards a wooded space with a small creek. He maintained it a little, but told he liked the how it looked. It made barbeques better, he said, felt more like he was camping out.

His house was compact but someone had remodelled inside, taken out walls, opened up the main space to make it roomier and Tim had a sense for laying out his furniture to keep the spaces open where they needed to be, making others smaller and more intimate.

On her first visit Rachel had been almost struck dumb by the home. It was a little nicer than hers, she had thought. Tim had told her he bought it with his fathers life insurance money. He’d always figured it was wise to own a home so as soon as he could, he did.

Charlie reached out and took the box from her in a way that seemed automatic and Rachel waved Raylan over and lead him inside, the older man teetering a little as he pushed off the wall. He had been hitting the bourbon a little hard since Texas, which in Raylan’s case meant just hard enough to actually show, to actually be a little unsteady on his feet. She didn’t blame him, with everything that had happened. He wasn’t out of control just yet, at least not by Raylan standards. As he entered, he focussed, tipped his hat to Charlie.

“You’re the guy?” Charlie asked with a typically friendly grin. “Givens?” he held out a hand to shake and Raylan grasped it.

“I suppose I am,” Raylan drawled, “I’ve never met you before. I’m pretty sure I’d remember that,” he looked pointedly up and up again at Charlie. 

“People tend to,” Charlie nodded, chuckled “Charlie Maku. I’m with Tim,” he said and said nothing more and Rachel spared a glance to see if Raylan understood. He appeared to with a small tip of his head and a little smile of realisation.

“You another one of the Army buddies he never wants us to meet?” Raylan asked as Charlie turned to walk further into the house.

“Right? It’s almost like he’s embarrassed about you or somethin’,” Charlie joked over his shoulder and Raylan actually laughed.

Charlie led them into the den, hit a switch to cast more light on the room which had been brightened only by the TV. He set the box down on top of a coffee table, besides a stack of coffee table books, each one for a different film. Tim loved the things and though he never asked for them, someone always got him one, each birthday, each Christmas.

He and Charlie had been watching a film she realised one of Tim’s favourites, the David Lynch version of ‘Dune’ but Charlie turned the sound down to a low murmur as he offered Rachel a seat in a comfy arm chair, directed Raylan into a matching one set opposite hers on the other side of the couch.

“You guys want a drink?” Charlie asked. “Coffees? Beer? Bourbon?”

“Um,” Tim’s voice called and he walked back in to the den, frowning at the sight of his two co-workers and friends. “Guys if this is a surprise party it’s a damn terrible one. If it’s an intervention I’m leavin’,” he half joked.

“I don’t need to have an intervention for you. I can put all the booze on the top shelf,” Charlie said and Tim flipped him off with his good hand, nodded a hello to Raylan.

Charlie ignored him and smiled at Rachel. “You were saying?”

“I’ll have a beer. He’ll probably have a coffee,” She nodded to Raylan who considered it, nodded.

“With some sugar. A lot of sugar,” Raylan said.

“You want instant or something takes effort? We got both,” Charlie asked Raylan.

“Instant, I’m not that classy,” Raylan smiled easily, took off his hat and dropped it on the coffee table, ran a hand through his hair to shake it out.

Rachel had already mentally noted that two empty tumblers and a bowl of popcorn sat together up at the head of the coffee table and a blanket Tim was slightly too casually tossing aside as he sat down.

 She was glad Charlie was here. Tim was about to need him.

Charlie headed for the kitchen and Tim slowly sank back onto the couch, wincing a little as he settled in. It was why he, like Raylan, was on a months leave. They were just badly hurt, needed the time to recover. Neither of them had protested it when Art told them to take the time. That had spoken volumes as well.

Like Raylan, Tim was on the mend, slowly but surely. The cut in his cheek had taken stitches but they were healing neatly and would come out soon enough. Like Raylan, he likely wouldn’t wind up with lasting physical scars. His arm was in a cast and would be so a little while longer, but most of the bruising on is face had faded, the swelling gone. His throat remained darkly bruised, taking that much longer to heal. He had left the hospital with a lingering cough, but it appeared to have cleared up.

He had no gel in his hair, leaving it soft and falling into his eyes and in a pair of old, beat up combats and an old Army –shirt, he was doing that thing where he looked nineteen. And he looked tired, his eyes deeply ringed with dark shadows. He wasn’t sleeping, she could tell.

“Is there a polite way for me to ask why you’re in my house?” Tim smiled warmly at her, noticed his box and quirked an eyebrow.

Rachel matched the smile, “I’ve been meaning to bring that over since we got back from Texas,” she nodded to the box. “I’ve got to go to a conference for the next few days so I thought I should make sure and bring it over,” she explained.

“Thanks,” Tim said as Charlie returned with the drinks, a beer for Rachel, the bottle of bourbon for he and Tim and a strong coffee for Raylan. “What about him?” Tim glanced at the older man.

“I invited myself,” Raylan said. “I’ve never seen your house before.” He nodded thanks to Charlie, reached out to take his coffee.

“There’s a reason for that,” Tim said and Raylan smirked at him.

“I’m too drunk to remember your address,” he said, a blatant lie but one designed to appease the younger Marshal.

Tim nodded, shrugged it off. “We got pizza coming if you want to stick around a while,” he offered with a smile that though a little haunted, was still Tim and Rachel smiled back.

 “Sure, sounds good,” She nodded. She paused, hesitated, unsure how to continue. She had to tell him. She had to. Did she do it with Raylan around?

Tim didn’t seem to need to talk right now and she couldn’t deny her want to put it off. Let him enjoy his peace a while longer. They didn’t need updating on the case, she had already done that, didn’t need to talk about it.

Deluna had been drugged like Tim had been, but he had suffered an allergic reaction and died quickly. The ME determined his reaction would have been obvious. The bikers would have known he was sick, maybe dying and left him without medical attention, without help. The survivors would likely spend decades in prison for the negligent murder of Deluna, the violent, brutal assaults on the Marshals.

The owner of the truck, the same man who let the bikers overrun his bar and use it as a base from which to fire on and abduct federal officers, had been arrested. After weeks spent with his attorney and a carefully planned deal offered by the DEA he had admitted to driving the truck, to transporting Hermann Buehler and another biker, some thirty years ago, over to the Golden Sands Motel. All he would cop to beyond that was sitting in his car listening to ‘good Christian radio’ while Hermann and the other man visited in one of the rooms. Hermann was on the run now but he’d be brought in soon enough and the other biker would be named, eventually.

The cases were, in a certain kind of way, winding down. Normality could resume, if they let it. But Rachel couldn’t. Tim had to know what she had learned.

Rachel expected the silence to get uncomfortable but it didn’t and they watched the film for a while and enjoyed the company.  But Rachel could feel the conversation she had to have looming over her head, looming over Tim.

She took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about something important. I wasn’t expecting the audience,” she nodded to Raylan.  

“I can go see your yard,” Raylan suggested and started to get up, but Tim shook his head.

“You’re inevitably going to find out anyway,” he drawled a little bitterly and Raylan thought about it, nodded, settled back in his seat. “What’s happening?” Tim turned back to her.  

Rachel bit her lip but Tim looked back at her expectantly.  “I said I would identify your brother. Find him a name or a birthday or anything at all. Something about who he was,” she said, watching Tim for his reaction. He watched her right back, expression calm and impassive but she knew he wanted her to continue.

Quietly, Charlie poured out two tumblers of bourbon and passed Tim his glass, sat back beside him with one long arm sprawled out along the back of the couch, close to Tim.

Rachel decided she didn’t want to drag this out. “I ran the footprints taken back when his body was first brought to the morgue and I couldn’t find any record of him in any databases,” she paused, saw a glimmer of disappointment on Tim’s face, but not much in the way of surprise. “That didn’t shock me. We knew that could happen,” she said, a gentle reminder and Tim nodded slowly.

Rachel glanced across to Raylan who was quietly sipping his coffee, acting like he wasn’t listening.

 She turned back to Tim, wished she had made Art come with her. She didn’t want to be this messenger. “I looked in that box you left,” she said, her tone apologetic, feeling as if she had breached his privacy. “I figured you looked through it before you knew about the boy so maybe something would stand out more in the new context,” It was one of the boxes he’d brought in when he showed Art the t-shirt, the whole reason he’d been sent down to Texas in the first place.

 Tim had taken some items down there with him, but he had left anything that seemed useless to the case and couldn’t’ t be safely carted around in a wallet. “I found a birth certificate in that box and I ran the foot prints on it. They were all I had. And they came back as a match.” She looked up, saw Tim sit forwards with an urgency, saw Charlie turn to him with a question in his eyes, back to Rachel, confused.

 “No,” Tim started to say, raising a hand as if to motion her to silence but Rachel spoke over him and he stood, walked away from her, turned back to glare at her while she spoke on.

“I ran the DNA. Yours. Against everyone in that room we had samples for. Against the boy and Lucy. They’re related to each other but not to you. I ran it against someone on your dads side that I found in a database and…Tim, I’m so sorry,” she said, felt her eyes grow hot with growing tears, saw the confusion and disbelief on Tim’s face, dawning understanding.

“Oh, _shit,_ ” Charlie said as he caught up, turning to watch Tim who had gone eerily still, was folding in on himself, putting up the walls and the barriers. She saw his expression close down, saw his eyes harden as his instincts made him protect himself.  The warm, welcoming demeanour faded and Rachel felt like she had intruded there. She hated to be the one doing this to him.

Raylan was looking between them, face a mask of open disbelief.

Tim spoke firmly, sounded almost angry, “Tell me _exactly_ what you mean.”

Rachel steadied herself. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t feel like she had a right. It wasn’t hers to cry over. She steeled herself, steadied her voice.

 She opened the box and took out the birth certificate she had left on the top and made sure her wording was clear. It might seem cold, but he needed to understand, “The boy who died in the motel room is Timothy Gutterson. You’re not related to him. Or to Lucy or Henry Gutterson…you’re not their son.”

 

                                                                                

                                


	27. Chapter 27

From the far end of the garden with the creek behind him and a slow frost chilling the air, Tim’s house looked caught between picturesque and sinister. He stared up the length of his feral garden, lights that Charlie had placed casting sporadic silvery pools of from behind trees or brushes, flashing glimpses of amber, green and brown, leaves dying, clinging on and long dead. The porch was a little lopsided and the back of the house was ivy-grown so the windows looked uneven and oddly framed. Tim could see a figure on the porch, watching him as he watched them. He figured on it being Charlie. He didn’t care so much right now. He’d been down there a long time, long enough to be completely cold but every muscle in his body was calm and still and he had no intention of heading back in any time soon. If Charlie was waiting for him, he would be waiting a while.

Tim sat in the chilly night air with his knees pulled up, and inhaled a long drag on his cigarette and listened to the wind stirring through the trees behind him. Against his back, through his t-shirt the bark of the tree Tim sat against was cold and rough and the on his bare arms and his neck goosebumped under the chilly air. He liked it out here. He liked the faint sounds of the wilderness behind him, an owl hooting into the air, occasionally fluttering overhead in a flurry of wings and resettling branches. In the quiet moments Tim could hear something moving slow and careful, maybe a semi urban fox stalking.

When he exhaled, his warm breath in the cold air mingled with the smoke and clouded around his head, blurring his view of the house more than the gathering chilly mist already did. Tim let it. It was rare, but sometimes he liked not being able to see who was looking at him.

He liked the quiet. He took it inside his head and spread it around, the chill too, closed his eyes remembered a cold, snowy mountainside somewhere in the Middle East, that he had once spent two days laying on only to go home without ever firing his gun. He hadn’t lamented a minute of wasted time. His nest had been on the edge of a cliff and afforded him a view down a long valley that stretched away for impossible miles, a river snaking through the valley floor and lighting the sunsets and sun rises on fire and the whole time he was there all he could hear was nature.

He could be there again now and be very content. Even if he had to kill somebody.

He inhaled again, felt the smoke fill his lungs. It hurt a little. The water had left him with a nasty cough that had taken days to shake and smoking absolutely did not help his discomfort, even though the cough had eventually cleared up. He exhaled calmly, enjoyed the faint buzz the nicotine gave him.

He was not Tim Gutterson.

He was not the son of the woman who abandoned him nor the man that beat him every day for near enough two decades.

Rachel wasn’t sure who he was, but it was a matter of time, she had promised. She would dig in, find out. He hadn’t had a response to that promise, wasn’t sure if he wanted her to do the work. He had tried to tell her but she was carried off with the mood or the excitement or something and wasn’t hearing him speak. It was about then he’d decided he would go and be outside for a while. He didn’t intend to be rude. He just needed to be outside.

He took a long draw on his smoke and pictured the valley again and recalled the stillness, found peace in it for a while longer, pushed the thoughts away once more.

He would have to dwell on it, eventually. At least, in theory. Some self destructive part of him wanted to ignore it entirely and see what effect it had on him.

Tim sensed someone approach and opened his eyes, flicked his thumbnail on the end of his cigarette. He watched the ash fall away, glanced up and watched Charlie dissolve into focus.

The taller man walked over in silence and sat beside him, sitting cross legged and folding his arms across his chest. He stared thoughtfully back towards the house. “At a time like this it’s important to speak with reverence for the circumstances. Choose words carefully so as not to make light of the tragedy being faced, so as not to give the impression of ignorance. With that in mind it’s important that you should know…that the pizza is here,” Charlie spoke in that low rumble of his and Tim felt a giggle rise in his chest, spill out of his mouth at the carefully considered tone the man used.

His mirth faded and they returned to the silence for a while, the chill gathering around them so Charlie instinctively edged a little closer, trying to share their body heat.

“If you’re thinkin’ like Art and you think I’ll freak out over this or I need to, I wont,” Tim promised and Charlie nodded, said nothing. “I hated those people,” he said of his parents, of the people he’d called his parents until so very recently.

Charlie nodded again, “I know.”

“I hated them,” Tim said again as if by repetition he made it true.

Charlie remained quiet.

Tim felt his chest rise and fall, felt his heart thud. He dug the heel of his hand into his eye and it came away warm and wet and he wiped his hand irritably against his arm.

“Henry loved that I could shoot,” Tim said urgently, the words spilling out of him unbidden as his mind flashed on the tall and muscular man he’d grown up calling ‘dad’, the thick hair Henry had worn bushy under a hand softened trucker cap.  He remembered his fathers hand, rough from years of hard labour, clutching Tim’s tight and firm as they pushed through the crowd at a county fair so Tim could show off at the rifle range. His dad smelled like fresh wood and varnish and under it all, bourbon.

“He never taught me how and he dug that I was a natural,” he said, the garden turning hazy. He blinked again, bit the inside of his mouth, pinched the inside of his arm hard. His vision cleared with the sharp pains he inflicted on himself.

 Tim remembered being carried back through the crowd later, beaming, clutching the biggest prize the stall had, Henry whooping and cheering. “He couldn’t get enough of watchin’ me shoot. He’d set up targets or take me hunting. He would brag to his friends from work and at the bar, tell them ‘no one can shoot like my boy’,” his voice caught on the word and he stopped, fell silent and clamped down on the voice inside his head that wanted him to talk. “He was so proud of me.” Even to his own ears his words sounded small.

“I know,” was all Charlie said.

Tim could see the lights of the fair, bare bulbs strung on wire and he could feel Henry’s arm strong around him, holding him up, heads and shoulders above the crowd and his father was telling everyone, ‘that’s my boy’ and he could smell sawdust and candy floss. The next day Henry tripped over Tim’s prize stuffed bear. He burned the stuffed bear and took his belt to Tim and left welts for a week.

“I hated them,” he said again, quieter than before, his words hollow and dull. He wrapped the silence and cold about himself again. Stillness came back, settled over them and Tim stared into nothing.

Charlie took a deep breath and exhaled a plume of condensation. “I know.”

 

 

 

to be continued....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and reviewing and just being here. This story is not done. Tim's history will be explored in full. 
> 
> Taking a (very brief) break for the holidays but I'll be posting new chapters of Part 2 of Lost Boy as soon as they're written. Hopefully I can work Boyd into the mix....
> 
> I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and if for some reason you can't please feel free to message me for some love and support. 
> 
> Love to you all, N  
> xxxx


End file.
